Brain-On-A-Chip to test effects of Biological and Chemical agents

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and engineers in the US have developed a “brain-on-a-chip” device aimed at testing and predicting the effects of biological and chemical agents, disease or pharmaceutical drugs on the brain over time, without the need for testing on human or animal subjects. The device, which is a part of the Lab’s iCHIP (in-vitro Chip-Based Human Investigational Platform) project, simulates the central nervous system by recording neural activity from multiple brain cell types deposited and grown onto microelectrode arrays. The platform, described in the journal PLOS One, could help scientists understand how brain cells connect and interact, combat brain disorders, determine how soldiers are affected by exposure to chemical and biological weapons and develop antidotes to counteract those effects.

Scientists stated that the platform is part of LLNL’s broader vision for countering emerging and existing threats, allows them to study the networks formed among various regions of the brain, and obtain timely, human-relevant data without animal or human testing. The data would be used to better predict human response to countermeasures, viruses or pharmaceutical drugs, and could help scientists determine if certain types of neurons are more susceptible to exposure.

According to the researchers, this technology also is enabling them to see how cells communicate differently when combined with, or located close to different cell types. Depositing the cells with the micro-fabricated, funnel-like insert allows the insert to be used with any type of chip platform or cell type because it doesn’t require patterning the chip’s surface with different chemicals to adhere the cells to it.

With the brain-on-a-chip platform, researchers could analyze how disease spreads through the brain, model epilepsy, or potentially examine the effects of chemical or biological exposure over a timespan of several months.

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The research is continuing as part of a Strategic Initiative focused on the brain. The initiative incorporates brain and blood-brain barrier chip-based platforms for applied scientific research. The next step, researchers said, is to expand the brain-on-a-chip device to three dimensions and sort through the data collected thus far to determine how it correlates with in vivo data. The research was funded by a Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program.