Hollow Microfiber Assembly‐Based Endocrine Pancreas‐on‐a‐Chip for Sugar Substitute Evaluation

Abstract

With the increasing demand for low‐sugar, low‐calorie healthy diets, artificial sweeteners are widely used as substitutes for sugar in the food industry. Therefore, developing models that can better predict the effects of sugar substitutes on the human body is necessary. Here, a new type of endocrine pancreas‐on‐a‐chip is developed based on a microfiber assembly and its stimulation of pancreatic secretion by glucose or sugar substitutes is evaluated. This new endocrine pancreas‐on‐a‐chip is assembled using two components: (1) a cell‐loaded hollow methacrylate gelatin (GelMA)/calcium alginate (CaA) composite microfiber prepared by microfluidic spinning to achieve vascular simulation and material transport, and (2) a 3D pancreatic islet culture layer, which also serves as a fiber assembly microchip. Using this established organ chip, the effects of five sweeteners (glucose, erythritol, xylitol, sodium cyclamate, and sucralose) were investigated on pancreatic islet cell viability and insulin and glucagon secretion. The constructed endocrine pancreas‐on‐a‐chip has potential for the safety evaluation of sugar‐substituted food additives, which can expand the application of organ chips in the field of food safety and provide a new platform for evaluating various food additives.

Advanced lung organoids and lung-on-a-chip for cancer research and drug evaluation: a review

“…In recent years, with the continuous progress in microfabrication and tissue engineering technologies, the construction of advanced 3D culture systems has enabled the establishment of biomimetic 3D human tissue or organ models, which may solve the problems prevalent in existing 2D cell culture and animal models (Tan et al, 2022;Tian et al, 2023). Moreover, these models can more accurately simulate lung cancer and evaluate drug efficacy (Li et al, 2023).…”