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In development in a University of Bath-led project, the system could reveal how signals travel between organs and why glucose affects brain function, enabling researchers to explore the link between diabetes and dementia.
Diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease are two of the world’s most pressing health problems, especially in ageing societies. While diabetes is widely known to affect the heart, kidneys and eyes, growing evidence suggests it is also linked to problems with memory, learning and brain function. The biological mechanisms behind the link remain poorly understood, however.
“Our gut, pancreas and brain are constantly communicating via a network of signals, helping us regulate hunger and blood sugar. But we still don’t fully understand how these signals interact at a cellular level and why glucose levels are linked to cognitive decline,” said project lead Dr Despina Moschou in a Bath announcement today (18 May).
“By creating a connected system on a chip, we can study in real time how signals travel between organs, how diabetes may impair brain function and how new drugs could help.”
Awarded £500,000 in funding by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the three-year GlucoBrain project will start in October. Involving collaborations with the University of Oxford and Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, the work will bring together engineers, clinicians, biologists and computer scientists to model the complex disease interactions.
Most current knowledge on the link between diabetes and dementia comes from animal studies, simple cell cultures and patient studies. While these are useful, they do not fully and accurately capture all the complex interactions between our organs, hormones and cells.
Organ-on-a-chip technology uses living human cells in miniature devices that mimic how organs work in the body. Unlike cell cultures grown in a petri dish, these devices allow cells to grow in three dimensions, receive a controlled supply of nutrients and interact more naturally. Researchers also aim to isolate the individual organs and cell types to understand exactly how they communicate at a molecular level.
The team will first develop individual chip models for the gut, pancreas and brain, before connecting them into a multi-organ system. They will gradually increase complexity and measure how each organ responds to glucose, hormones and different drug treatments.
The early-stage research is designed to build the foundations for even more advanced and realistic models, bringing together more organs and cell types. The researchers hope their findings could pave the way for new treatments to improve the lives of millions of people affected by diabetes, dementia or both.
“Not only would these devices give us an unprecedented way to study diseases, but they could help speed up drug discovery and testing, reducing reliance on animal models and making results more relevant to humans. In the long term, they could pave the way for personalised medicine, using a patient’s own cells to identify the most effective treatment,” said Dr Moschou.
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