A quantitative meta-analysis: Is organ on a chip cell cultures better than static cell cultures?

Abstract

Abstract As many consider organ on a chip for better in vitro models, it is timely to extract quantitative data from the literature to compare responses of cells under flow in chips to corresponding static incubations. Of 2251 screened articles, 361 articles described flow for cell culture and 113 contained the correct static control. Analysis of 1386 ratios between biomarkers measured in cells under flow and static cultures, respectively, showed that flow resulted in quantitative advantages with statistical significance in cells from the blood vessels, intestine, tumours, and the liver. This correlates with the overrepresentation of these tissue types in the literature. The median improvements were about a two-fold for these tissues and less for others. Stronger improvements by flow were linked to specific cell types and biomarkers combinations. Only the calcium uptake in osteocytes, and the CYP3A4 activity and Muc2 mRNA levels in Caco2 cells were reproductible induced by flow in several independent articles. However, the degree of improvement differed between articles suggesting that chip architectures or type of static control has an effect. The analysis shows that cells under flow mostly are similar to static cultures and that advantages are linked to specific biomarker and cell type combinations.