Development of a kidney microphysiological system hardware platform for microgravity studies

Development of a kidney microphysiological system hardware platform for microgravity studies

Determining the physiological effects of microgravity on the human kidney is limited to relatively insensitive tests of biofluids (blood and urine) that do not return abnormal results until more than 50% of kidney function is lost. We have developed an “organ on chip” microphysiological model of the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:NPJ microgravity Vol. 10; no. 1; pp. 54 - 9
Main Authors: Jones-Isaac, Kendan A., Lidberg, Kevin A., Yeung, Catherine K., Yang, Jade, Bain, Jacelyn, Ruiz, Micaela, Koenig, Greta, Koenig, Paul, Countryman, Stefanie, Himmelfarb, Jonathan, Kelly, Edward J.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 11-05-2024
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Portfolio
Subjects:
631/1647/277
692/308
692/308/575
Applied Microbiology
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biotechnology
Classical and Continuum Physics
Effluents
Engineering
Experiments
Immunology
Kidney diseases
Kidneys
Life Sciences
Microgravity
Perfusion
Physiology
Renal function
Space Exploration and Astronautics
Space flight
Space Sciences (including Extraterrestrial Physics
Transcriptomics
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Summary:Determining the physiological effects of microgravity on the human kidney is limited to relatively insensitive tests of biofluids (blood and urine) that do not return abnormal results until more than 50% of kidney function is lost. We have developed an “organ on chip” microphysiological model of the human kidney proximal tubule (PT-MPS) that can recapitulate many kidney functions and disease states and could play a critical role in determining mechanisms of early kidney dysfunction in microgravity. However, the ground-based PT-MPS system is incompatible with spaceflight as it requires a large pneumatic system coupled to a cell incubator for perfusion and intensive hand-on manipulation. Herein, we report the hardware engineering and performance of the Kidney Chip Perfusion Platform (KCPP), a small, advanced, semi-autonomous hardware platform to support kidney microphysiological model experiments in microgravity. The KCPP is composed of five components, the kidney MPS, the MPS housing and valve block, media cassettes, fixative cassettes, and the programable precision syringe pump. The system has been deployed twice to the ISSNL (aboard CRS-17 and CRS-22). From each set of ISSNL experiments and ground-based controls, we were able to recover PT-MPS effluent for biomarker analysis and RNA suitable for transcriptomics analysis demonstrating the usability and functionality of the KCPP.
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ISSN:2373-8065
2373-8065
DOI:10.1038/s41526-024-00398-0