Abstract
In the past decade, liver disease has been one of the top ten death causes. Medical science researchers have focused on the development and testing of required drug. The effective functioning and safety of a new developed drug must be ensured via numerous experiments before reaching the market. Therefore, the developments of drug experiment platform become the focal point of biomedical research in recent years. Conventional biomedical studies are carried out either in vivo or in vitro. In vivo research utilizing intact organisms can provide high resemblance to the real physiological conditions. However, the variations in experimental results are relatively high due to the high complication of organisms and the great diversity of entities. It is also difficult to observe the biological processes in whole organisms. The problems of laws and morality must also be considered. However, the advantage of in vitro studies is that the simulated biological environment can be created depending on the research target. The environment can be controlled and it is easier to observe and manipulate. But it is unable to reflect the complex physiological responses found in vivo. In this research, we propose an in vitro liver circulatory system via the concept of cell pattern technology and microfluidic system. There are two features of the proposed liver Labchip: (1) Mimicking the condition of blood vessel and liver-lobule-mimetic engineered tissue. To achieve this we have manipulated four kinds of cells in two different bio-chambers via DEP cell patterning technology. (2) Mimicking the circulatory system and condition of blood flow in the liver lobule. To accomplish this two bio-chambers were connected via the lobule-flow-mimic microchannel. The experimental results reveal that the liver-specific function, urea secretion of this proposed in vitro liver circulatory system show 78% of enhancement when compared with absent liver circulatory system. In recent years, only few researchers made an attempt to combine the engineered liver tissue with a liver circulatory-like fluidic system. The proposed research shows some exciting initiative results in liver tissue reconstruction. The ultimate goal of the present research is to construct in vitro liver tissue and make it closer to the actual liver functioning. This research will be an useful tool for developing platform of drug testing and screening.