Reconstruction and Biomechanical Design of Microvascular Models / 医用生物力学

Neovascularization plays an important role in many physiological and pathological processes, but its mechanism is still unclear. Since vascular cells are subjected to a variety of biochemical and biomechanical stimulations in vivo and live in a complex microenvironment, it is necessary to construct the vascular model in vitro and simulate the in vivo microenvironment to explore the mechanism of neovascularization. Recently, owing to the advance of micromachining and microfluidic technology, various in vitro microvascular models have emerged. Variables such as shear stress, interstitial flow and biochemical gradient of angiogenic factors have been controlled in these models, which greatly promotes the research of neovascularization. The construction, development and biomechanical design of various microvascular models are reviewed in this paper.

The Research Progress of Microfluidic Organ-on-Chips / 医用生物力学

Microfluidic technology refers to the technique of precise fluid control by manipulating submillimeter-scale fluids. In recent years, the use of microfluidic technology has realized the construction of organ-on-chips. The organ-on-chip refers to a micro-model with physiological functions, and cultivating living cells in a continuously perfused micro-chamber to simulate the physiological functions of tissues and organs. As the physiological function of the organ-on-chip has many advantages such as definite function, controllable microenvironment, rich measurement information, low chemical consumption, low cost, promising automation and high throughput, it has a huge application prospect in the field of drug development to solve the bottleneck problems in cellular and animal experiments, which has caused a great concern in the academic community. Although the organ-on-chip is still a very young research field, some microfluidic organ-on-chips have been developed and their potential applications are explored, including drug target optimization, drug screening and toxicity tests, and biomarker identification. In this review, the progress made in microfluidic organ microchips and their potential significance in clinical research were analyzed.