Immune-competent organ-on-chip methodologies to study type 1 diabetes

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a self-driving autoimmune condition leading to the death of insulin-producing β-cells of the pancreas. β-cell-reactive immune cell extravasation into the intra-islet space is fuelled by a cycle of inflammation including immune, vascular and endocrine dysfunction. Since clinical pancreatic biopsy is contraindicated, T1D research relies on static in vitro culture or in vivo models that either cannot fully replicate the dynamic interactions between the three different tissue types or differ greatly from the human disease process.

Recent advances in bioengineering have led to the emergence of Organ-on-Chip (OoC) platforms that aim to recapitulate the human diabetic pancreatic environment. Early T1D-relevant OoC-based research focused on the assessment of islet viability. This review turns its attention to the next frontier of vascularised and immune-competent PoC models, which hold promise for the study of the insulitis of T1D and to predict treatment response to novel therapies.

PoC models can incorporate technologies developed for cancer and non-diabetes inflammation applications to inform chip design, vascularisation, immune perfusion and pancreatic component incorporation. An established PoC model can then be utilised for a detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis and functional correlation of the immune, vascular and pancreatic components according to an a priori Context of Use (CoU).

The ease of manufacturing, combined with a future possibility of a fully human autologous PoC, could enable high-throughput screening of T1D tissue for underlying causes of patient heterogeneity that, in turn, could inform personalised treatment approaches, prolonged cell therapy survival and novel preventative measures.