Biochips for wound healing

© Technical University Vienna

Complex biology and chip technology have been combined at the Vienna University of Technology. This enables customized, personalized medicine on the smallest spaces. For the first time, a chip for wound healing measurement will be introduced publicly to an international expert audience at the exhibition “Labvolution”.

Despite their inconspicuous appearance, the integrated structures can produce measurement data, which up until now required an entire lab along with a highly qualified staff. Medical examination results are thus available more quickly and at lower costs. This comprises a decisive step in the direction of personalized medicine.

Simpler, quicker, less expensive – "Size matters"

Valuable insights for the diagnosis can be generated by extracting a person’s cells and multiplying them in a conventional cell culture, before analyzing them. The CellChipGroup at the Vienna University of Technology develops miniaturized systems which not only make this procedure simpler and less expensive, but in addition, deliver physiologically more accurate results. By means of very small channels, so-called microfluidics, essential biological conditions including temperature, pressure and flow rates are reproduced. This provides the most realistic environment possible for the cells living on the chip.

The CellChipGroup developed the miniaturized wound healing system to obtain personalized insights into the effectiveness and/or the side effects of medication. A so-called cell layer directly in the chip arises, which is then inflicted with small wounds in a controlled, standardized and reproducible manner, similar to real life conditions. Not only can the wounding process itself be explored on the biochip, but how the wound closes by itself, how the migration rate of cells behaves and above all which medicines improve and accelerate the wound healing process can all be studied with a degree of accuracy.

Apart from microfluidics, the CellChipGroup at the Vienna University of Technology also focuses on numerous other technologies which are indispensable for “lab on a chip” applications such as lithography, casting technology, hot stamping and micro-injection molding. Numerous biochips made from different polymers or from glass/polymer hybrid materials are being produced at the Vienna University of Technology.