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Electroconductive and Anisotropic Structural Color Hydrogels for Visual Heart-on-a-Chip Construction
Lingyu Sun1, Zhuoyue Chen2, Dongyu Xu1,2
1Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, Institute of Translational Medicine, The Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, 210008, China.
Advanced Science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany)
|March 29, 2022
Summary
Researchers developed a novel structural color hydrogel for heart-on-a-chip devices. This innovation enables visualized, accurate heart modeling for drug screening and understanding cardiomyopathy mechanisms.
Area of Science:
- Biomedical Engineering
- Materials Science
- Cardiovascular Research
Background:
- Heart-on-a-chip systems are crucial for studying cardiomyopathy and drug development.
- Existing systems face challenges in fabrication simplicity, accurate imitation, and microphysiological visualization.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a novel electroconductive and anisotropic structural color hydrogel for advanced heart-on-a-chip applications.
- To create a visualized heart-on-a-chip system with enhanced accuracy and functionality.
Main Methods:
- Fabrication of a hydrogel by polymerizing colloidal arrays on super aligned carbon nanotube sheets (SACNTs).
- Creation of a hybrid hydrogel with a structural color layer and a conductive GelMA/SACNTs film.
- Integration of the hydrogel with microfluidics to form a heart-on-a-chip system.
Main Results:
- The anisotropic SACNTs induced cardiomyocyte alignment and synchronous beating.
- Cardiomyocyte beating caused hydrogel deformation, leading to dynamic shifts in structural color and spectra.
- A visualized heart-on-a-chip system with consistent beating frequency was established for sensing and drug screening.
Conclusions:
- The developed electroconductive and anisotropic structural color hydrogels are suitable for visualized and accurate heart-on-a-chip construction.
- This technology shows potential for dynamic cardiomyocyte sensing and drug screening.
- The novel hydrogels hold promise for diverse biomedical applications.
