Airway-On-A-Chip: Development and In Vitro Validation of A Microfluidic Cell Culture Model for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an inflammatory disorder of the lung, and one that affects 2.6 million Canadians and 380 million people worldwide. Although the disease affects a large population worldwide the therapies used for treatment remain imprecise. With the lack of disease modifying therapies there is a pressing need to discover novel targets to promote new therapeutic discoveries and ultimately improve the care and health outcomes of patients with COPD. To date, the discovery of novel therapeutics has been greatly hindered by outdated cell models and costly animal models. Our group proposes that through collaboration between engineers, pharmacologists, biologists and physicians we can leverage Organs-on-chips (OOC) technology to discover and validate novel COPD therapeutic targets. Organs-on-chips are miniature devices mimicking aspects of the in vivo conditions of human organs. What we propose to do in this project is to build upon a previously developed airway-on-a-chip technology to better mimic the human airways.

Faculty Supervisor:

Karen Cheung

Student:

Sayyed Soroush Nasseri

Partner:

Providence Health Care

Discipline:

Engineering - biomedical

Sector:

Medical devices

University:

Program: