The assessment for biocompatibility of artificial blood substitutes (ABS) by researchers and regulatory bodies, such as the FDA, is required before ABS enter clinical settings, however no current method to test the toxicity of ABS in pre-clinical trials proves to be effective in vivo or in vitro, quick to test in a laboratory setting, provide reliable toxicity results, or be properly representative of the human model.
Pre-clinical evaluation of ABSs relies on animal models and 2D cell culture tests. Animal models do not equate to human representation standards and therefore do not yield reliable or meaningful results. 2D cell cultures cannot be fully representative of organs on the cellular level without simulations of the specialized organ function or multiple cell types tested in tandem. Thus, there is a need to develop a reliable system to test the hemodynamics of blood substitute mixtures, that is both easy to operate and maintain, and imitates in vivo conditions on a multi-organ platform. Organs-on-a-chip are composed of 3D cell cultures that provide a method for human in vitro testing. As blood vessel mimicry is crucial for measuring ABS viability within the human circulatory system, 3D lumen culturing is an imperative development with hopes that the in vitro results may lead to a better understanding of ABS behaviours within in vivo environments.