Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 11
. Harimoto's scheme for multilayer co-culture (27).
Figure 12
. Bhatia's scheme for co-culture, with geometrically distinct areas on the
same layer (5).
types interact with each other remain largely unknown, researchers can still ex-
amine the effects of these interactions.
The cell that provides most of the liver's metabolic function is the hepato-
cyte, but hepatocytes grown on their own lose function after a few weeks. Hari-
moto et al. developed techniques for growing hepatocytes layered with
endothelial cells, and this improved hepatocyte function compared to hepato-
cytes alone (27) (Figure 11).
Bhatia et al. performed similar experiments in microdevices and showed
that epithelial cells also enhance hepatocyte function and survival (6) (Figure
12), and also showed that the effect of hepatocyte-endothelial cell co-culture
varies depending on how many of each cell type are included and how much
contact area there is between the two cell types (5).
Other experiments have had similar results with different cell types, both
inside and outside of the body (8), telling us that the fabrication of functional
living tissue will require control of numerous cell types.
