Available for Licensing
US Patent: US 2021/0318286
Thomas Chen
Caleb Begly
Michael Siegel
Jessy McGowan
Jessy.McGowan@colostate.edu
970-491-7100
At a Glance
Investigators at Colorado State University have developed a new Ussing chamber design that combines the latest integrated electronics, integrated electrodes designs, and microfluidics into one compact system platform that allows users to custom configure the system to study multiple tissues simultaneously.
Background
An Ussing chamber is an important device to study live tissues, especially for tissues that require (different) nutrients at each side of the tissue. Traditional Ussing chamber designs rely on glass chambers for suspending the tissue under test with separate glass tubes supplying nutrients to both sides of the tissue to keep it alive over a required period of time. The traditional Ussing chamber designs uses discrete glassware and clamps for assembly and bench top instrumentation for measuring TEER (Trans-Epithelial Electrical Resistance).
Therefore, the chamber setup is bulky. In addition, only one chamber is set up for each experiment, thus, severely limiting its throughput. With increasing need for studying live tissues for a variety of diseases and the effects of potential therapeutics on the tissues for drug screening and discovery, demand for compact Ussing chambers with the capability of monitoring multiple live tissues targeting multiple analytes and with high throughput will significantly increase in the near future.
Overview
The new Ussing chamber design combines the state-of-the-art integrated electronics, integrated electrodes with different surface modifications for different sensing modalities within the same package. A sophisticated microfluidic support system is also incorporated into the compact Ussing chamber platform to provide balanced buffer and therapeutics flows to each Ussing chamber. These new features allow users to custom-configure the Ussing chamber to study multiple live tissues simultaneously on target analytes the experiment requires. Studying multiple live tissues simultaneously has not been attempted before and the new Ussing chamber platform provides significant opportunities for highly multiplexed approach to studying live tissues with the capability of having multi-analyte panel for more accurate understanding of biological processes.
Benefits
- Portable
- Multi-sensor circuits
- Real-time monitoring and analysis
- Ability to study multiple tissues simultaneously
Applications
- Physiologic Instruments
- Research and academic institutions
Last updated: November 2021
