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Biomedical Engineering
Team 8
Team Members |
Faculty Advisor |
Dylan Barlow |
Syam Nukavarapu Sponsor TEST Lab |
sponsored by
Osteoarthritis is a chronic degenerative disease of articular joints and affects 50-60 million people in the US alone. Currently there are no proven effective treatments or therapies, which is largely attributed to the incongruence between in vitro and in vivo models used during testing. The excessive cost, timeframes, and ethical concerns of current testing processes all point to a need for improved methods, as well as a more accurate model of human in vivo conditions. Organ-on-a-chip devices aim to provide a more convenient and accurate way to replicate human conditions and study disease or pharmaceuticals. Although some organ-on-a-chip devices have been created thus far, a chip that models the synovial joint has yet to be designed. This project’s objective is to design and construct a synovial joint on a chip using CAD design and 3D printing. The chip is designed with three microchambers, one for bone, cartilage and synovium, respectively. Each channel has individual fluid flows, as well as cells seeded in hydrogel. We placed a common channel through the center of the chip to model vascularization as a means of introducing pharmaceutical therapies. Due to our focus and emphasis on accurately modeling in vivo conditions, the device created can rapidly increase the development and testing of osteoarthritis drugs and therapies.