Microfluidic Biotool to Accurately Model Corrosive Chemical Exposures for Human

Project Summary There is a critical gap between the need to evaluate the effect of chemicals on human physiology and the availability of in vivo and in vitro testing systems that provide the necessary predictive data This need is especially pronounced for corrosive and caustic chemicals that are not compatible with current in vitro and in vivo testing systems For example the Toxic Substances Control Act TSCA requires that the EPA inventory all currently manufactured processed and imported chemical compounds This list currently contains chemicals many with no toxicity data evaluated in a biologically relevant manner The scope of this SBIR project is to develop a first in class corrosive resistant fluidic culture system that will enable industries including environmental regulatory agricultural chemical and consumer products to evaluate thousands of corrosive and caustic chemicals for their effects on human tissues and cell lines under physiologically relevant conditions SciKon Inc has previously introduced a disruptive technology to the scientific tools market that enables toxicity testing under non linear flow conditions in a microfluidic environment The corrosive resistant SciFlow system to be developed in this work will provide three major advances over current toxicological testing options dramatically improved biological relevance due to the fluidic and non linear exposure gradients of the core SciFlow technology ability to test corrosive chemicals at higher doses for longer periods of time without degradation of the tissue culture plate and exposure of the cells to the plastic breakdown products compatibility with high content imagers and plate readers due to the optical properties of the glass like plastic polymers and SBS compliant plate format In Phase I we will complete the following Specific Aims Aim Characterize glass like polymers that can withstand corrosive environments are able to be injection molded for mass production and are inert for cell culture Aim Generate a glass like SciFlowTM System prototype for corrosive exposure kinetics and bioassay evaluation Upon completion of the Phase I aims our Phase II work will focus on validating the system and scaling the unit for production Successful completion of this project will result in development of the SciFlow corrosive resistant system which will provide the first in vitro system with a chemically inert environment suitable for repeated dosing in long term corrosive culture environments Project Narrative Thousands of caustic and corrosive chemicals that are used in multiple industries including agricultural consumer and chemical have not been tested for their effects on human physiology This is largely due to the lack of in vitro systems that can evaluate the exposure of these chemicals on human cell lines In this project SciKon is developing a novel in vitro microfluidic system that will significantly enhance our capability to predict the effects of caustic and corrosive chemicals on human systems