DynaMiTES – A dynamic cell culture platform for in vitro drug testing PART 2 – Ocular DynaMiTES for drug absorption studies of the anterior eye

Abstract

In the present study, a formerly designed Dynamic Micro Tissue Engineering System (DynaMiTES) was applied with our prevalidated human hemicornea (HC) construct to obtain a test platform for improved absorption studies of the anterior eye (Ocular DynaMiTES). First, the cultivation procedure of the classic HC was slightly adapted to the novel DynaMiTES design. The obtained inverted HC was then compared to classic HC regarding cell morphology using light and scanning electron microscopy, cell viability using MTT dye reaction and epithelial barrier properties observing transepithelial electrical resistance and apparent permeation coefficient of sodium fluorescein. These tested cell criteria were similar. In addition, the effects of four different flow rates on the same cell characteristics were investigated using the DynaMiTES. Because no harmful potential of flow was found, dynamic absorption studies of sodium fluorescein with and without 0.005%, 0.01% and 0.02% benzalkonium chloride were performed compared to the common static test procedure. In this proof-of-concept study, the dynamic test conditions showed different results than the static test conditions with a better prediction of in vivo data. Thus, we propose that our DynaMiTES platform provides great opportunities for the improvement of common in vitro drug testing procedures.

Lipid Nanoparticle Technology for Delivering Biologically Active Fatty Acids and Monoglycerides

“…The immortalized human corneal epithelial cell line (HCE-T) is the most extensively characterized human-derived cell line and therefore the most frequently used in corneal 3D models [ 123 , 124 ]. In order to better mimic dynamic eye barriers and therefore more reliably predict nanoparticle safety, it is advised to use models that provide dynamic flow conditions such as the recently developed DynaMiTES model [ 125 , 126 ]. As such, there is enormous potential to develop lipid nanoparticle technologies for ocular applications in future efforts.…”

Skin-on-a-Chip Device for Ex Vivo Monitoring of Transdermal Delivery of Drugs—Design, Fabrication, and Testing

“…For this reason, the microfluidic environment looks an optimal approach to reach our goal: to miniaturize the diffusion set-up. After some previous studies in cell culture platforms [12,37,38] to realize this approach, our laboratory produced a device to fulfill the requirements of the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry to make an economical and reliable drug-screening platform. The parallelization, automation, and further developments according to the requirements of the researchers and end users are in progress.…”

Three-Dimensional Human Cell Culture Models to Study the Pathophysiology of the Anterior Eye

“…Another interesting approach is Ocular DynaMiTES [ 104 ]. To create this dynamic model, the developers used a formerly designed Dynamic Micro Tissue Engineering System (DynaMiTES) and applied it to the human hemicornea (HC) construct [ 105 , 106 , 107 ].…”