PhD defence: From Mechanism to Medicine: Advancing In Vitro Disease Models Using Microfluidics

PLEASE NOTE: The candidate gives a layman's talk, therefore the livestream will start fifteen minutes earlier.

This thesis explores how organ-on-a-chip technology can be used to develop more advanced models of the kidney and intestine to study inflammatory diseases by reconstructing human tissue structures, barrier function, and immune interactions in vitro.

An important limitation in current drug development is that conventional preclinical models insufficiently capture the complexity of human inflammatory disease, contributing to poor translation of therapeutic strategies.

Therefore, we aimed to develop in vitro models that integrate epithelial, endothelial, and immune cells under controlled conditions to better mimic physiological tissue environments.