A liver-chip-based alcoholic liver disease model featuring multi-non-parenchymal cells

Non-parenchymal cells play a key role in the occurrence and development of alcoholic liver disease. However, this cellular behaviour has not been fully characterized, and it is inconvenient to observe in traditional in vitro alcoholic liver disease (ALD) models and animal models. Herein we developed a demountable liver-on-chip device for investigation of pathophysiological process of individual non-parenchymal cells in alcohol induced ALD. This liver-device comprised of HepG2, LX-2, EAhy926 and U937 cells, which were ordered in a physiological distribution under perfuse. This device allows improved HepG2 cells activities and maintained high liver functions which including albumin synthesis and urea secretion. This novel liver-device is able to recreate the damage process of hepatic non-parenchymal cell lines induced by alcohol, and to understand the intercellular communication between different types of hepatic cells during ALD by measuring multiple biomarkers of each types of hepatic non-parenchymal cell lines, including Ve-cadherin, eNOS, VEGF and α-SMA. The proposed liver-device is able to further studies of pathological analysis and drug- and toxicity-screening.