Organ-on-Chip Centre TWENTE FACILITIES
A vibrant innovation and technology-based infrastructure for Organs-on-Chips at the Organ-on-Chip Centre Twente.
With our facilities, the Organ-on-Chip Centre Twente aims to be the focal point in the Netherlands for the technical development of organs-on-chips. We are actively maintaining a vibrant innovation and technology-based infrastructure, with strong links to national and international academia, medical centres and societal partners. We work hard to make our facilities accessible not only for our internal researchers, but also for external users from academia, research institutes and companies from the Netherlands, Europe and beyond.
Our facilities take full advantage of University of Twente's national expertise on microfabrication, tissue engineering, microfluidics, imaging and sensing, and available infrastructure, organized in the TechMed BioEngineering Labs. These state-of-the-art facilities with shared laboratories enable the development of next-generation of organ-on-chip platforms. This allows us to tackle scientific and societal challenges in human health and medicine.
Contact
The Organ-on-Chip Centre Twente facilities are embedded in hDMT INFRA as a Sevice Centre of Expertise, taking full advantage of national partnerships of hDMT and collaboration with similar national initiatives. We are supported by the NWO project "hDMT INFRA OoCDev" and the National Growthfund programme "NXTGEN Hightech project Biomed One-Stop-Shop".
For contact on using the Organ-on-Chip Centre Twente facilities, please reach out to hDMT INFRA via info@hdmt.technology or directly to our centre at oocct@utwente.nl. For more information on available equipment and workflows as well as a low-threshold way to get access to specific workflows, please visit the website of the BioEngineering Labs.
MANUFACTURING
At the moment, there is a critical need for implementing emerging tissue engineering technologies on-chip that allow the creation of 3D architecture typical of living tissues. To fully harness bioprinting strategies for living OoC fabrication, our facilty requires advanced biofabrication equipment. Microfabrication technologies, in particular biofabrication via bioprinting, enable precise patterning of multiple cells types and extra-cellular matrix mimicking biomaterials in 3D structures. We will establish a state-of-the-art workstation to enable the rapid manufacturing of OoC with high 3D complexity.
OPERATION
Operating OoC systems requires pumps to drive fluid flow through the individual cell culture microcompartments. The challenge grows uncontrollably with obstacles such as parallel systems, unique cell culture medium or multiple chips connected into multi-organ systems. Many of these challenges can be overcome with the Translation Organ-on-Chip Platform (TOP), which offers automation and multiplexing in a modular platform. To further develop and implement TOP as the national standard for OoC culture and control, we will develop infrastructure to automate microfluidic flow control in multiple OoC at once.
READ-OUT
There is a strong need for both high-resolution and real-time, live-cell imaging inside intact OoC devices. We aim to implement pioneering techniques such as adaptive optics and wavefront shaping to improve imaging through the complex structures present within OoC. In addition, developing and implementing non-invasive read-out techniques, such as Optical Coherence Tomography and electrical impedance sensing, we can track barrier function of tissues in OoC and provide real-time and spatial information.
