Electroacoustic Responsive Cochlea-on-a-Chip

Yangnan Hu; Jiayue Xing; Hui Zhang; Xinyi Pang; Yabo Zhai; Hong Cheng; Dongyu Xu; Menghui Liao; Yanru Qi; Danqi Wu; Bin Zhang; Lin Cheng; Bo Chu; Chen Zhang; Yuanjin Zhao; Renjie Chai

doi:10.1002/adma.202309002

Electroacoustic Responsive Cochlea-on-a-Chip

Adv Mater. 2024 Mar 15:e2309002. doi: 10.1002/adma.202309002. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Yangnan Hu^{1

2}, Jiayue Xing¹, Hui Zhang¹, Xinyi Pang³, Yabo Zhai⁴, Hong Cheng¹, Dongyu Xu¹, Menghui Liao¹, Yanru Qi¹, Danqi Wu¹, Bin Zhang¹, Lin Cheng⁵, Bo Chu⁶, Chen Zhang^{7

8

9}, Yuanjin Zhao¹⁰, Renjie Chai^{1

2

11

12

13}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Digital Medical Engineering, Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Zhongda Hospital, School of Life Sciences and Technology, Advanced Institute for Life and Health, Jiangsu Province High-Tech Key Laboratory for Bio-Medical Research, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, China.
² Co-Innovation Center of Neuroregeneration, Nantong University, Nantong, 226001, China.
³ College of Food Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, Nanjing, 210023, China.
⁴ School of Medicine, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210009, China.
⁵ Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610000, China.
⁶ Department of Cell Biology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, 250012, P. R. China.
⁷ State Key Laboratory of Neurology and Oncology Drug Development, Nanjing, 210000, China.
⁸ School of Basic Medical Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Neural Regeneration and Repair & Beijing Laboratory of Oral Health, Capital Medical University, Beijing, 100069, China.
⁹ Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing, 102206, China.
¹⁰ Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, China.
¹¹ Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610072, China.
¹² Department of Neurology, Aerospace Center Hospital, School of Life Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China.
¹³ Southeast University Shenzhen Research Institute, Shenzhen, 518063, China.

PMID: 38488690
DOI: 10.1002/adma.202309002

Abstract

Organ-on-chips can highly simulate the complex physiological functions of organs, exhibiting broad application prospects in developmental research, disease simulation, as well as new drug research and development. However, there is still less concern about effectively constructing cochlea-on-chips. Here, a novel cochlear organoids-integrated conductive hydrogel biohybrid system with cochlear implant electroacoustic stimulation (EAS) for cochlea-on-a-chip construction and high-throughput drug screening, is presented. Benefiting from the superior biocompatibility and electrical property of conductive hydrogel, together with cochlear implant EAS, the inner ear progenitor cells can proliferate and spontaneously shape into spheres, finally forming cochlear organoids with good cell viability and structurally mature hair cells. By incorporating these progenitor cells-encapsulated hydrogels into a microfluidic-based cochlea-on-a-chip with culture chambers and a concentration gradient generator, a dynamic and high-throughput evaluation of inner ear disease-related drugs is demonstrated. These results indicate that the proposed cochlea-on-a-chip platform has great application potential in organoid cultivation and deafness drug evaluation.

Keywords: cochlear organoid; conductive hydrogel; electroacoustic stimulation; microfluidics; organ‐on‐a‐chip.

Abstract

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