Labs and Organs on Chip for Health and Environment

The recent rapid developments in bionanotech and micro/nanofluidic technologies has enabled the realization of miniaturized laboratories. These Labs-on-a-Chip will play an important role in future medicine, both in point-of-care devices for drug or biomarker monitoring, as well as in early diagnostic devices. Microfluidics can also be exploited to manipulate and experiment with cells on chip. We have developed a microsystem for sperm analysis and selection for artificial insemination, where we can electrically detect and sort healthy sperm cells. Apart from diagnostic and cell manipulation devices, microfluidic devices are increasingly used to realise advanced disease and organ-models, as illustrated by the blood-brain barrier chip, a blood vessel on a chip to study atherosclerosis and cancer spheroids on chip for dynamic drug dosing. These Organs on Chip may lead to more rapid and cheaper drug development, personalised medicine and improved disease models, while minimizing or even eliminating animal testing (3R principle). We have developed a Translational Organ on Chip Platform (TOP) that enables simple plug and play connection of different Organ on Chip modules to a fluidic base plate. Finally, a microfluidic impedance spectroscopy system will be presented that can monitor the calcification of coccolithophores (algae), which plays an important role in the oceanic carbon cycle.