Harvard researchers create a vagina on a chip to treat infections

A team of bioengineers from Harvard University, in the United States, announced the creation of the first vagina in a chip. It is not, of course, a sex toy, but a device that will allow the cellular environment of a vagina to be recreated in order to test different medical treatments.

What it is about is to emulate in a controlled, but real way, what happens in the female vaginal canal, to test drugs that can combat bacterial vaginosis, without having to resort to synthetic alternatives, tests on animals whose biology does not exactly match with the human, nor to volunteers who may suffer the side effects of any treatment.

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To do this, they created a 2.5 cm long device, which has live vaginal tissue and a delivery system. microfluidics which simulates the vaginal canal to scale, and allows the flow of an estrogen-carrying material to be administered.

This chip is not the first: In Argentina, for example, for several years now these organs have been working on a chip at the University of San Martín, among other places. Currently, there are two methods to “arm” these organoids. One of them is known as top down, which starts from synthetic biomaterials and isolated cells that are combined to form a structure that mimics or emulates the miniature organ. The other method is the so-called bottom up, through which the self-organization capacity of the cells is used.

In the same way, there are several techniques that are being applied to print living tissuewhich can then be used to replicate the functioning of entire organs, allowing experimentation with new techniques and drugs without endangering anyone.

GDA / The Nation / Argentina

Source: Elcomercio

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