Blood transfusions are a perpetual source of concern within the medical community. Ensuring access not only to blood of safe quality, but also of sufficient quantity, is a problem in many areas around the world. Not only does blood collected from traditional donors have a short shelf life, but in some places, the screening protocols may not be adequate to prevent the transmission of disease. Even in countries with advanced blood screening, immune- based rejection is still a significant obstacle in the case of blood transfusions. Hence, there is a need for a shelf-stable blood with a guaranteed sterility and reduced chance of rejection by the patient's body. Blood substitutes of this type are currently in development, but testing the toxicity of such substances on human physiology has been plagued by a multitude of complications. Blood substitute testing could benefit from utilizing three dimensional cell culture, as opposed to a two dimensional cell culture in tandem with the microfluidic networks that would allow the blood substitutes to flow past human tissues at controlled rates.

To better understand the hemodynamics and toxicity of artificial blood substitutes and how they behave in physiological environments, we propose a method for testing artificial blood substitutes that consists of utilizing a microfluidic device to flow the ABS mixture through an ECM lumen cultured with HUVECs and A7r5 cells that better models in vivo conditions.