A customizable multi-organ microphysiological platform designed to connect hepatic metabolism with cardiac functional assessment for studying drug metabolism, cardiotoxicity, and liver-heart crosstalk under controlled microfluidic conditions.
- Overview
- Platform
- Advantages
- FAQs
Overview
The liver and heart are closely connected in drug response and systemic toxicity. The liver is a major site of drug metabolism and biotransformation, while the heart is a critical target organ for evaluating electrophysiological, contractile, and structural toxicity. In many cases, cardiac effects may be influenced not only by the parent compound but also by liver-generated metabolites, changes in circulating mediators, or secondary organ-organ responses.
Conventional in vitro models often assess liver metabolism and cardiac toxicity separately. While these models provide important information, they may not fully represent metabolite-mediated cardiotoxicity, time-dependent compound conversion, or soluble-factor-driven liver-heart communication. Animal studies can provide integrated physiological context, but species-specific differences in hepatic enzymes, cardiac ion channels, heart rate, and toxicity mechanisms may limit direct translation to human responses.
Liver-Heart-on-a-Chip is a connected multi-organ microphysiological system that integrates a hepatic compartment with a cardiac compartment through controlled microfluidic flow. The platform is designed to help researchers evaluate how hepatic metabolism affects downstream cardiac exposure and how drug-induced liver or heart responses may interact within a defined experimental system.
What Is Liver-Heart-on-a-Chip?
Liver-Heart-on-a-Chip is a microengineered platform that links liver and cardiac tissue models in a controlled fluidic environment. Depending on the study design, it can incorporate hepatocytes or liver co-cultures together with cardiomyocytes, engineered cardiac tissues, or iPSC-derived cardiac models. The platform is intended to recapitulate selected features of the liver-heart axis, including:
- Compartmentalized hepatic and cardiac culture chambers
- Controlled transfer of drugs, metabolites, nutrients, and soluble mediators
- Hepatic metabolism, detoxification, and liver injury-related responses
- Cardiac viability, contractility, electrophysiology-related, and stress-response endpoints
- Time-dependent assessment of parent compounds, metabolites, and organ-specific biomarkers
Compared with isolated static cultures, a connected liver-heart model provides a more integrated approach for assessing drug metabolism, metabolite-driven cardiotoxicity, and multi-organ safety profiles. As a custom platform, the configuration can be adapted to match specific study goals, cell sources, assay endpoints, and compound exposure strategies.
Our Liver-Heart-on-a-Chip Platform
Our custom Liver-Heart-on-a-Chip platform connects a hepatic module with a cardiac module in a controlled microfluidic system, supporting metabolism-linked cardiac safety studies and organ-specific response analysis.
Key Features
- Integrated liver-heart model: Links hepatic metabolism with downstream cardiac exposure.
- Customizable configuration: Supports project-specific cell models, chip design, flow conditions, and assay endpoints.
- Controlled microfluidic flow: Enables defined transfer of compounds, metabolites, and soluble factors.
- Functional hepatic module: Supports metabolism, viability, and liver biomarker analysis.
- Cardiac response module: Enables assessment of viability, beating behavior, contractility-related parameters, and stress markers depending on model design.
System Design & Validation
The platform uses separated but fluidically connected liver and heart compartments, allowing tissue-specific culture while maintaining defined inter-organ communication.
- Liver module: Evaluated for morphology, viability, albumin secretion, urea production, and CYP activity.
- Heart module: Assessed for cardiomyocyte viability, morphology, beating activity, and cardiac marker expression.
- Flow control: Supports time-course sampling and controlled delivery of liver-processed compounds to the cardiac compartment.
- Analytical compatibility: Suitable for imaging, qPCR, ELISA, LC-MS/MS, calcium imaging, cytotoxicity assays, and selected electrophysiology-related readouts.
- Quality control: Includes sterility, chip integrity, leakage testing, cell viability, and flow stability checks.
Applications
The platform can be customized for liver-heart axis and drug safety studies, including:
- Metabolism-linked cardiotoxicity: Evaluate cardiac responses following hepatic biotransformation of test compounds.
- Drug-induced liver and cardiac injury: Assess organ-specific toxicity in a connected microphysiological system.
- Metabolite profiling: Analyze parent compound depletion and metabolite formation with suitable analytical methods.
- Cardiac functional assessment: Study beating rate, rhythm-related changes, contractility-related parameters, or calcium handling depending on system configuration.
- Mechanistic toxicology: Investigate links among metabolism, oxidative stress, inflammatory signaling, mitochondrial stress, and tissue injury biomarkers.
Why Choose Our Liver-Heart-on-a-Chip
- Connected metabolism-cardiotoxicity model for studying hepatic processing together with downstream cardiac response.
- Custom platform development to accommodate specific cell types, exposure routes, sampling schedules, and endpoint requirements.
- Improved relevance for safety assessment compared with isolated liver or cardiac cultures when metabolite-mediated effects are important.
- Dynamic microfluidic environment enabling controlled inter-compartment transport and time-dependent analysis.
- Flexible cell sourcing including primary hepatocytes, liver co-cultures, iPSC-derived hepatocyte-like cells, iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes, cardiac spheroids, or engineered cardiac tissues depending on project goals.
- Customizable endpoints for metabolism, viability, cardiac function-related analysis, inflammation, oxidative stress, and organ injury biomarkers.
FAQs
Q: Why use a Liver-Heart-on-a-Chip instead of separate liver and cardiac assays?
Separate assays are useful for organ-specific screening, but they may not capture the influence of hepatic metabolism on cardiac exposure. A connected Liver-Heart-on-a-Chip allows liver-processed compounds, metabolites, and soluble mediators to reach the cardiac compartment under controlled conditions, supporting more integrated toxicity and mechanism studies.
Q: Can this platform be used to study metabolite-mediated cardiotoxicity?
Yes. This is one of the key applications of the platform. Test compounds can be introduced into the liver compartment, where metabolic processing may occur, followed by transfer to the cardiac compartment. Cardiac responses can then be assessed together with metabolite analysis using appropriate analytical methods.
Q: What liver models can be used in the custom system?
The hepatic compartment can be configured with primary human hepatocytes, hepatic cell lines, iPSC-derived hepatocyte-like cells, liver organoids, or co-culture systems that include non-parenchymal cells such as Kupffer-like cells, liver sinusoidal endothelial cells, or hepatic stellate cells, depending on the research objective.
Q: What cardiac models are compatible with this platform?
The cardiac compartment can incorporate iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes, cardiac spheroids, engineered cardiac tissues, or cardiomyocyte co-cultures with supporting cell types such as cardiac fibroblasts. The model selection depends on whether the study focuses on viability, contractility, rhythm-related changes, structural toxicity, or mechanism exploration.
Q: What endpoints can be measured using Liver-Heart-on-a-Chip?
Common endpoints include hepatic viability, albumin secretion, urea production, CYP activity, parent compound depletion, metabolite formation, cardiomyocyte viability, beating rate, rhythm-related changes, calcium transient analysis, contractility-related measurements, cardiac marker expression, inflammatory cytokines, oxidative stress markers, mitochondrial stress indicators, and cytotoxicity biomarkers such as LDH, ALT, AST, or cardiac troponins where appropriate.
Advance metabolism-linked cardiac safety studies with a customized Liver-Heart-on-a-Chip platform.
Contact us today to discuss chip configuration, cell model selection, exposure design, cardiac readouts, analytical endpoints, and tailored study solutions.
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