A “spleen-on-a-chip” has been created by researchers from MIT, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and other institutions. The chip models how the spleen filters out old or damaged red blood cells and helps understand the phenomenon of acute splenic sequestration in sickle cell disease patients, which is made difficult by the misshapen blood cells.
The research provides a general framework to understand the spleen’s filtration process and how it helps filter blood cells.
Ref: Qiang, Y., Sissoko, A., Liu, Z. L., Dong, T., Zheng, F., Kong, F., Higgins, J. M., Karniadakis, G. E., Buffet, P. A., Suresh, S., & Dao, M. (2023, February 2). Microfluidic study of retention and elimination of abnormal red blood cells by human spleen with implications for sickle cell disease. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(6). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2217607120