Advanced Science (Jul 2022)

ALTEN: A High‐Fidelity Primary Tissue‐Engineering Platform to Assess Cellular Responses Ex Vivo

  • Andrew M. K. Law,
  • Jiamin Chen,
  • Yolanda Colino‐Sanguino,
  • Laura Rodriguez de la Fuente,
  • Guocheng Fang,
  • Susan M. Grimes,
  • Hongxu Lu,
  • Robert J. Huang,
  • Sarah T. Boyle,
  • Jeron Venhuizen,
  • Lesley Castillo,
  • Javad Tavakoli,
  • Joanna N. Skhinas,
  • Ewan K. A. Millar,
  • Julia Beretov,
  • Fernando J. Rossello,
  • Joanne L. Tipper,
  • Christopher J. Ormandy,
  • Michael S. Samuel,
  • Thomas R. Cox,
  • Luciano Martelotto,
  • Dayong Jin,
  • Fatima Valdes‐Mora,
  • Hanlee P. Ji,
  • David Gallego‐Ortega

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202103332
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 21
pp. n/a – n/a

Abstract

Read online

Abstract To fully investigate cellular responses to stimuli and perturbations within tissues, it is essential to replicate the complex molecular interactions within the local microenvironment of cellular niches. Here, the authors introduce Alginate‐based tissue engineering (ALTEN), a biomimetic tissue platform that allows ex vivo analysis of explanted tissue biopsies. This method preserves the original characteristics of the source tissue's cellular milieu, allowing multiple and diverse cell types to be maintained over an extended period of time. As a result, ALTEN enables rapid and faithful characterization of perturbations across specific cell types within a tissue. Importantly, using single‐cell genomics, this approach provides integrated cellular responses at the resolution of individual cells. ALTEN is a powerful tool for the analysis of cellular responses upon exposure to cytotoxic agents and immunomodulators. Additionally, ALTEN's scalability using automated microfluidic devices for tissue encapsulation and subsequent transport, to enable centralized high‐throughput analysis of samples gathered by large‐scale multicenter studies, is shown.

Keywords