In a collaboration between the group of Nico Sommerdijk and Anat Akiva (Radboudumc) and the group of Pascal Jonkheijm (UTwente) an Organ-on-Chip platform was developed, which is suitable for advanced microscopy, and now presented as a pre-print on bioRxiv (https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.31.605958). By restricting the size of the microtissues and fixing them to PDMS pillars, the 3D cell cultures were made suitable for longitudinal (multiple weeks) live fluorescence microscopy of the complete sample, live Raman microscopy, and subsequent correlative (volume) electron microscopy on a targeted location of interest. This set-up allows to reveal dynamic information as well as ultrastructural details during microtissue development.
Live fluorescence microscopy of a mineralized bone-on-a-chip culture (actin: red; collagen: green; mineral: magenta; maximum intensity projection) after 42 days of osteogenic differentiation (left). Afterwards, the full culture was cryopreserved and processed for volume electron microscopy (right).
