Placenta-on-a-chip could revolutionize research into pregnancy-related conditions
A placenta-on-a-chip that mimics the workings of the placenta has been developed, allowing further research into the organ without posing harm to the mother or fetus.
Despite efforts to gain a comprehensive understanding of the role of the placenta during pregnancy, the workings of the organ remain a puzzle yet to be fully deciphered. In a significant breakthrough for placental research, a team of scientists from the School of Medicine at the University of Dundee (UK) has developed a placenta-on-a-chip system, called iPlacenta, that mimics the placenta, allowing the organ to be studied. The findings were a culmination of a 4-year study and collaborative effort with MIMETAS (Oegstgeest, Netherlands), an organ-on-a-chip developer.
The team sought to model the placental barrier in vitro to understand placental dysfunction, which is believed to lead to diseases such as pre-eclampsia and to address the questions that remain around drug interactions with the placental barrier during pregnancy.
Discussing the study, lead author Colin Murdoch (University of Dundee) stated that: “Just a tiny fraction of the most common drugs used by women in pregnancy have excellent safety data behind them. However, iPlacenta can be utilized by the pharmaceutical industry to research the interaction between drugs and the placenta. This allows drug companies to look at the organ in a more physiological format and could have a potentially transformative impact on medical care for pregnant women.”
Turning to organ-on-a-chip systems, which have emerged as a promising approach for studying cellular microenvironment and drug toxicity, the scientists cultured induced pluripotent stem cell-derived trophoblasts in the device. Upon differentiation, they observed that the trophoblasts had self-assembled into a 3D structure that formed a structural barrier and expressed genes associated with early placental development, mainly involved in cell surface receptor signaling and interactions with the microenvironment.
Gwenaëlle Rabussier, a scientist at MIMETAS and co-author, commented: “Organs are three-dimensional objects, but until now medical research has been conducted in just two dimensions. Working on this project has been exciting as it opens tremendous opportunities for unraveling placental mysteries associated with placental barrier drug transfer and pathologies such as pre-eclampsia.”
The findings from the study could transform research into pregnancy-related conditions such as pre-eclampsia and fetal growth restriction. The team emphasized the need for additional studies utilizing stem cells derived from diseased patients to fully understand the workings of the placenta.
