OGD-LOC

Pharmacological basic research and regulatory testing still rely on animal experiments, which face ethical, medical, and economic limitations. A promising alternative lies in microfluidic and microphysiological systems (MPS), in which cell cultures, organoids, or tissue samples can be supplied and incubated for various test scenarios in a way that mimics the living organism. These miniature laboratories, known as lab-on-a-chip systems (LoC), offer high scalability and are therefore superior to animal testing – not only economically but especially from an ethical standpoint.

One major challenge, however, is time-resolved monitoring. For this purpose, optical coherence tomography (OCT) – a technique from biomedical diagnostics – is particularly suitable, as it can spatially resolve structures and changes across several orders of magnitude, from the cellular (~µm) to the tissue (~mm) level. To enable non-invasive in vitro assessment of, for example, the effects of a toxic substance or a drug on cells or tissue, the Fraunhofer IWS is developing an integrated system combining microphysiological tissue cultivation in a lab-on-a-chip with time-resolved optical diagnostics using OCT. Through this innovative combination, tissue studies can be conducted as alternatives to animal testing with integrated inline monitoring.