Engineers develop placenta on a chip to study caffeine transport from mother to fetus

Engineers used microfluidic technology to create a "placenta-on-chip" that models how compounds can be transmitted from the mother to the fetus.

"Microfluidics interests me and I like to use technology to understand what's going on in the cell environment and in the body," said Nicole Hashemi, an badociate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Ottawa. Iowa State University and project leader. . "We examined different organs and decided to develop a placenta model because there are not many studies on this important temporary organ."

The placenta develops in the woman's uterus during pregnancy. Through the umbilical cord, it provides oxygen and nutrients to the fetus and removes waste from the bloodstream of the fetus.

Animal models of the placenta do not translate well for human health, said Hachemi. And because of the temporary nature of the placenta, few studies have been conducted on humans. Those that were made showed inconsistent results.

The placenta model of engineers is described in an article recently published online by the scientific journal World challenges published by John Wiley & Sons Inc. Hashemi is the corresponding author. The co-authors are Rajeendra Pemathilaka and Saurabh Aykar, Iowa State graduate students in mechanical engineering; Jeremy Caplin, former graduate student at Iowa State Georgia Tech; and Reza Montazami, badociate professor in mechanical engineering in the state of Iowa.

The document will also appear on the cover of a print edition of the newspaper.

A grant from the Office of Naval Research and a Young Investigator Award to Caplin from the Lush Society have developed the placenta model.

Hashemi said that it had taken four years of hard work to find a work model. Engineers first had to design the microfluidics – they finally chose a model with two microchannels 100 million meters high and 400 million meters wide. Then they had to figure out how to efficiently develop cells on either side of a porous biocompatible membrane that would separate the two channels and represent the placental barrier. They also had to identify the correct test compound using the model in order to understand the transport from the maternal side to the fetal side.

The engineers chose caffeine for their initial study.

This is a relevant medical issue: due to unknown effects of maternal caffeine consumption on the fetus, health authorities such as the World Health Organization have recommended limiting consumption caffeine during pregnancy.

This is also an important question for Hashemi: "I drink a lot of tea," she explained, a cup of tea sitting on her desk. "It's personal to me."

And is the mother's tea or coffee caffeine part of it in the baby's blood? Tests with the model indicate that some do.

The engineers introduced a caffeine concentration of 0.25 milligrams per milliliter – a concentration deemed safe by the US Food and Drug Administration guidelines – on the maternal side of the model for one hour, then monitored the changes over 7.5 hours , according to the document. At half past six, the maternal side reached a constant caffeine concentration of 0.1513 milligrams per milliliter and the fetal side reached a constant concentration of 0.0033 after five hours.

Now that they have demonstrated their technology, Mr. Hashemi explained that the model was being used with research partners from the College of Medicine at Ohio State College to study how different drugs were going through the placental barrier.

He was also interested in studying how environmental toxins are transported from mother to fetus, she said. Future studies could include personalizing the technology – by actually adjusting the model with maternal or fetal cells to help prescribe medications or dosages. And maybe one day researchers could study the effects of placental transport of chemicals and compounds on individual cells.

"We are trying to model the true placenta," Hachemi said. "Now that this placenta-on-chip technology is in place, we can collaborate with researchers working on all kinds of projects."

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University of Iowa State