An organ on a chip to study movement and joint diseases

Cartilage cells in joints experience mechanical loading during daily activity, which is difficult to study in animal models. Together with Chiron leaders in on-chip technologies, we will investigate how cartilage cells respond to external forces and how this affects the protein factories in the cell.

In the Netherlands, 1.5 million people suffer from the disabling disease osteoarthritis. There is no cure for osteoarthritis and the end-stage of the disease is treated by joint replacement surgery. Joint-on-chip technology will help us to investigate how human cells respond in a human environment to mechanical loading. Such molecular research was not feasible before and will aid in understanding the disease process.

To avoid the use of animals for this research, we will use freshly isolated human cartilage cells from surgical waste material and culture these cells in human joint fluid. Next, we will establish how cells and their protein factories respond to standard mechanical loading. Finally, we will use those results to optimize the cell health status using different mechanical loading regimes. Ultimately, this project is expected to reveal how movement can be used to stop or slow down osteoarthritis disease progression.

Four deliverables are defined in the project: 1) Implementation of freshly isolated OA chondrocytes to the JoC. 2) Implementation of OA synovial fluid to the JoC. 3) Optimal biomechanical activation of the ribosome in the JoC. 4) Determination of the effect of biomechanical loading on OA chondrocyte disease status. Overall, this will lead to a thorough understanding of cartilage cell mechanical biology.