Advanced Liver-on-a-Chip Model for Evaluating Drug Metabolism and Hepatotoxicity

Abstract

The liver has many important functions, including the biotransformation of drugs and detoxification of the human organism. As such, it is also exposed to many harmful substances, which leads to disorders and diseases such as cirrhosis. For these reasons, it seems important to consider liver metabolism and the direct effects on the liver when evaluating the efficacy of new drugs. Accordingly, we have developed an advanced in vitro liver model using an organ-on-a-chip approach that replicates many of the morphological and functional features of the liver in vivo. The model we created can metabolize drugs, which we demonstrated using two widely used anticancer drugs, 5-fluorouracil (5FU) and capecitabine (CAP). In addition, to the best of our knowledge, we are the first who evaluate the direct effects of these drugs not only on the viability of liver model-building cells but on their functions, such as cytochrome P450 activity and albumin production. Our study brings new hope to properly evaluating drug efficacy at the in vitro level.