A microfluidic platform on which fragile blood vessels can be fixed was recently developed by Canadian scientists. The device allows to study the factors that promote and sustain cardiovascular diseases. The device could be used to routinely screen drug candidates on viable arteries. This may speed up the drug development process and could reduce animal experimentation.

To study microvascular structure and function researchers currently use either an isometric approach or an isobaric method. Both procedures require manually skilled personnel and are not scalable. These key factors have limited the number of laboratories carrying out microvascular research. Several of these limitations could have been overcome by Axel Günther and colleagues, University of Toronto, by developing a microfluidic platform to mount arteries on, which is scalable, inexpensive and has potential for automation and standardisation. The device could be used to routinely screen drug candidates on viable arteries. This may speed up the drug development process and could reduce the need for animal experimentation.


Read an overview article from Jennifer Newton, RSC Publisching: Highlights in Chemical Technology: "Artery-on-a-chip studies heart disease" from July 7, 2010.

Further Information: See original publication of Axel Günther, Sanjesh Yasotharan, Andrei Vagaon, Conrad Lochovsky, Sascha Pinto, Jingli Yang, Calvin Lau, Julia Voigtlaender-Bolz and Steffen-Sebastian Bolz: "A microfluidic platform for probing small artery structure and function". In: Lab Chip, 2010 DOI: 10.1039/c004675b

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