Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015 Sep;34(3):165-9.
doi: 10.1016/j.krcp.2015.08.001. Epub 2015 Aug 20.

Organ-on-a-chip and the kidney

Sejoong Kim  1 , Shuichi Takayama  2
Affiliations

Organ-on-a-chip and the kidney

Sejoong Kim et al. Kidney Res Clin Pract. 2015 Sep.

Abstract

Traditional approaches to pathophysiology are advancing but still have many limitations that arise from real biologic systems and their associated physiological phenomena being too complicated. Microfluidics is a novel technology in the field of engineering, which provides new options that may overcome these hurdles. Microfluidics handles small volumes of fluids and may apply to various applications such as DNA analysis chips, other lab-on-a-chip analyses, micropropulsion, and microthermal technologies. Among them, organ-on-a-chip applications allow the fabrication of minimal functional units of a single organ or multiple organs. Relevant to the field of nephrology, renal tubular cells have been integrated with microfluidic devices for making kidneys-on-a-chip. Although still early in development, kidneys-on-a-chip are showing potential to provide a better understanding of the kidney to replace some traditional animal and human studies, particularly as more cell types are incorporated toward the development of a complete glomeruli-on-a-chip.

Keywords: Kidney; Microfluidics; Organ-on-a-chip.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure. 1
Figure. 1
Concepts of microfluidics.
Figure. 2
Figure. 2
Concepts of organs-on-a-chip. PDMS, polydimethylsiloxane.
Figure. 3
Figure. 3
Simple example of an experiment using organ-on-a-chip.
Figure. 4
Figure. 4
Application of kidney-on-a-chip.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Beebe DJ, Mensing GA, Walker GM. Physics and applications of microfluidics in biology. Annu Rev Biomed Eng. 2002;4:261–286. - PubMed
    1. Sackmann EK, Fulton AL, Beebe DJ. The present and future role of microfluidics in biomedical research. Nature. 2014;507:181–189. - PubMed
    1. Martinez AW, Phillips ST, Whitesides GM, Carrilho E. Diagnostics for the developing world: microfluidic paper-based analytical devices. Anal Chem. 2010;82:3–10. - PubMed
    1. Berry SM, Maccoux LJ, Beebe DJ. Streamlining immunoassays with immiscible filtrations assisted by surface tension. Anal Chem. 2012;84:5518–5523. - PubMed
    1. Bhatia SN, Ingber DE. Microfluidic organs-on-chips. Nat Biotechnol. 2014;32:760–772. - PubMed