Development of organ-on-chip sensors to monitor cardiac tissue

Organ-on-chips (OoCs) are multi-channel 3D microfluidic cell culture systems that enable controlled recapitulation of the physiological environment of human organs or tissues. OoCs have received increased attention as the next generation testing platforms for personalized medicine, overcoming some of the challenges encountered with pre-clinical animal studies. An important aspect of OoCs is their adequacy for integrated circuits such as sensors that can serve as monitoring tools. Radiation-induced effects are most often investigated at specific time points due to the challenges related with real-time readouts such as the need of bulky instruments, data interpretation and reduced sensitivity to name a few. As a consequence, only partial understanding of the underlying mechanisms has been obtained, hampering the development of effective countermeasures. Through the avenue of circuit integration, some of these challenges can be overcome in OoCs. Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide and radiation-induced cardiac aging is an important onset of these diseases. Therefore, we intend to integrate electro-chemical sensors in a heart-on-chip to monitor radiation-induced cardiac aging. Furthermore, generation of OoCs are also time consuming and costly. We thus anticipate to utilize the developed sensors to also monitor the heart-on-chip when using long-term preservation methods. Altogether, this PhD envisions the development of organ-on-chip sensors to monitor cardiac tissue, benefiting applications in Space as well as here on Earth.

The minimum diploma level of the candidate needs to be

• Master of sciences
• Master of sciences in engineering

The candidate needs to have a background in

• Bio-engineering
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Electronics

Estimated duration

Expert group