Creative Bioarray provides you with in vitro liver models based on the Cell Patterning. This service can help you overcome the defects of traditional culture and establish an in vitro liver model closer to the in vivo microenvironment, so as to enhance your understanding of the causes of liver injury and cancer, improve the efficacy of preclinical drug discovery, and become a powerful tool for developing new drugs and studying metabolism in vivo.

Why Cell Patterning for In Vitro Liver Models?

The research on the mechanism of liver disease mainly focuses on drug screening and liver tissue engineering technology. However, the traditional liver model is plagued by many limitations. For example, in the traditional cell culture method, hepatocytes are cultured in flat dishes. This static 2D cell culture system shows poor cell viability and cells lose their phenotypic function. Patterning technology is a promising tool for liver tissue engineering and liver system development. It can simulate the complex microenvironment and microstructure in vivo. These systems provided by patterning technology can improve liver specific function and can be extended to include a variety of 3D culture methods, which is very important for maintaining liver function and reproducing the characteristics of natural liver. Therefore, the emergence of cell patterning technology can lead to more effective and faster preclinical drug development.

Applications of Cell Patterning for In Vitro Liver Models

The liver is responsible for most of the metabolism of oral drugs, which allows the effective transport of drugs and other xenobiotics. Because the liver plays a central role in concentrating and metabolizing most drugs, it is the main target of drug-induced injury. Drug metabolism is the main determinant of hepatotoxicity, because detoxification and biological activation processes can occur, and most often lead to individual differences in drug-induced toxicity. The liver is the metabolic center of the human body. It is responsible for the storage, synthesis, metabolism and redistribution of carbohydrates, fats and vitamins, and plays a vital role in metabolic homeostasis. Therefore, developing an efficient and suitable in vitro model should simulate the complexity of the liver environment in vivo, which is very important to understand the liver metabolism, the mechanism of initial liver injury and the study of drug hepatotoxicity. 

Fig. 1 Main applications of in vitro liver models in new drug development. (Gómez-Lechón, et al.,2007)

What Can We Do?

The clinical applications of two-dimensional cell culture are limited due to major problems such as cell pollution, genetic drift, variable drug reactivity and limited ability to predict toxicity. The new in vitro liver model provided by us solves many shortcomings of the traditional liver in vitro system, such as lack of sinusoidal heterogeneity, in vivo cell density, oxygen induced zoning and liver circulatory system.

The in vitro liver model established by using dielectrophoresis cell patterning technology requires less culture medium and cells than traditional culture, which can maintain cell viability and metabolic capacity, showing sustained liver like cell function and good correlation with in vivo clearance.Therefore, our in vitro liver model can maintain liver specific function and accurately predict the response to poisons in vivo. In addition, our in vitro liver model can replicate complex properties other than liver specific metabolism, such as increased cell density, tissue and cell-cell signal transduction, and the anatomical structure of hepatic lobules and circulatory system.

The in vitro liver models we can provide are mainly the following:

• 3D human liver model
• Liver chip
• Organoid culture system of liver
• Hepatocyte co-cultures
• Liver tumor organoids
• In vitro model of nonalcoholic fatty liver
• 3D tissue culture model of liver fibrosis

Our models have proven useful in developmental and toxicological studies and provides an exciting opportunity for more function related clinical modeling. Our in vitro liver models can enhance your understanding of the causes of liver injury and cancer, improve the efficacy of preclinical drug discovery, and become a useful clinical tool for precision medicine.

Why Choose Us?

• Maintain liver specific function
• Accurately predict the response of the body to poisons
• Long term liver metabolism and toxicity study
• Scientific and reasonable scheme design
• Rich experience in cell patterning projects

Creative Bioarray provides customers with cell patterning customization and related detection services based on Cell Patterning, you can contact our employees directly to ask questions if you are interested in our services, please contact us for more details.

Reference:

1. Gómez-Lechón.; et al. Hepatocytes--the choice to investigate drug metabolism and toxicity in man: in vitro variability as a reflection of in vivo. Chemico-biological interactions.2007; 168(1), 30–50.