Investigating nanoplastics toxicity using advanced stem cell-based intestinal and lung models.

Plastic particles in the nanometer range-called nanoplastics-are environmental contaminants with growing public health concern. As plastic particles are present in water, soil, air and food, human exposure intestine and lung is unavoidable, but possible health effects are still to be elucidated. To better understand the Mode of Action of plastic particles, it is key to use experimental models that best reflect human physiology.

Arrested coalescence of multicellular aggregates.

Multicellular aggregates are known to exhibit liquid-like properties. The fusion process of two cell aggregates is commonly studied as the coalescence of two viscous drops. However, tissues are complex materials and can exhibit viscoelastic behaviour.

MOrgAna: accessible quantitative analysis of organoids with machine learning.

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the application of organoids to developmental biology, biomedical and translational studies. Organoids are large structures with high phenotypic complexity and are imaged on a wide range of platforms, from simple benchtop stereoscopes to high-content confocal-based imaging systems. The large volumes of images, resulting from hundreds of organoids cultured at once, are becoming increasingly difficult to inspect and interpret.

Fluorescence background quenching as a means to increase Signal to Background ratio - a proof of concept during Nerve Imaging.

Adequate signal to background ratios are critical for the implementation of fluorescence-guided surgery technologies. While local tracer administrations help to reduce the chance of systemic side effects, reduced spatial migration and non-specific tracer diffusion can impair the discrimination between the tissue of interest and the background. To combat background signals associated with local tracer administration, we explored a pretargeting concept aimed at quenching non-specific fluorescence signals.

Direct On-Chip Differentiation of Intestinal Tubules from Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells.

Intestinal organoids have emerged as the new paradigm for modelling the healthy and diseased intestine with patient-relevant properties. In this study, we show directed differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells towards intestinal-like phenotype within a microfluidic device. iPSCs are cultured against a gel in microfluidic chips of the OrganoPlate, in which they undergo stepwise differentiation.