Published online Jun 26, 2023. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v15.i6.632
Peer-review started: February 15, 2023
First decision: April 10, 2023
Revised: April 10, 2023
Accepted: May 8, 2023
Article in press: May 8, 2023
Published online: June 26, 2023
Processing time: 130 Days and 16.5 Hours
Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) offer a potential alternative to building blood-brain barrier (BBB)-on-a-chip models that more closely resemble the structure and functions found in vivo.
iPSC-derived BBB models on-a-chip are a promising field that still lacks improvements and uniformity within the specialized literature.
To search the literature and analyze the selected data on the cultivation of iPSCs within microfluidic environments to mimic the human BBB.
A literature search using the PRISMA approach using the following terms: “iPSC,” “BBB,” and “microfluidic device,” wherein 14 studies were selected based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and data were organized into three tables and one flow chart.
Studies have been found from 2017 to 2022, wherein the microdevices were either commercially available or manufactured in-house using soft-lithography. iPSCs were differentiated into endothelial or neural cells and seeded in the chips individually or in co-culture onto an extracellular-matrix layer mainly made of collagen IV/fibronectin. The selected studies focused principally on the structural and functional design of the human BBB model on-a-chip, displaying future application potential for drug screening and disease modeling.
Despite the lack of consensus in protocols, the studies analyzed herein were able to efficiently reproduce a human microfluidic BBB in vitro making use of iPSCs.
The developed BBB models on-a-chip have shown great potential to study physiopathological conditions related to the central nervous system, to apply advanced technology approaches for novel therapies (drug delivery through nanoparticles), and to develop genetic modification therapies for BBB dysfunctions through clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats methodologies.