FABRICATION OF MICRO ORGANS USING A DIGITAL MICRO-MIRRORING MICROFABRICATION SYSTEM

摘要

Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technologies have been very attractive and demonstrate the potential for many applications in the field of tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and life sciences. These fields bring together the multidisciplinary field of engineering and integrated sciences to fabricate three-dimensional models that aides the exploration, generation or regeneration of organic tissues and organs. Presently, monolayer cell cultures are frequently used to investigate potential anti-cancer agents. The issues at hand are that these models give very little in terms of feedback on the effects of the microenvironment on chemotherapeutic and the heterogeneity of the tumor. Three-dimensional tumor and cancer models that mimic the actual disease are developed for in vitro investigations. These models create an environment that enables diseases to have an enhanced evaluation (compared to two dimensional) and eliminate the limitations of the traditional mainstays of cancer research. Three-dimensional Cancer models are economic, allow for biological characterizations. Cancer models are developed from investigations of the actual disease; computer tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) allow for biomodeling of the disease's environmental conditions. Unlike many traditional microfabrication techniques, the Digitial Micro-mirror Microfabrication (DMM) System eliminates the need for mask by incorporating a dynamic mask-less fabrication technique. The DMM is specifically designed for the developments of biologically inspired devices, whether it's a multicellular spheroid, hollow fiber, or multicellular layer (MCL) models; the DMM has the potential to utilize its dynamic micro mirrors to build the tissue model according to its desired design and characteristics. Each model is specifically designed to mimic the in vivo conditions of the tissue of interest.