Thanks everyone for your comment, we’ve reached the end of the AMA session. If you have any follow-up questions, feel free to add them here and I’ll try to answer them

Thanks Jackson! Great question… In this current configuration, the focus was to use commercially available cells. We screened a few vendors and used the cells expressing appropriate vaginal epithelial cell makers. In this study we used 2 different donors from Caucasian and Hispanic ethnicity. Both donors behaved similarly on the chip with some… Read more

Thanks Rebecca! Next step is incorporation of immune cells and mucus to better enable host-microbiome interactions..

Hi Ben, great questions…

1. There is no consensus yet if Vagina is hypoxic or not. The current methods of measuring comes with its own challenges such as tampon based sensors leading to influx of atmospheric air. So, keeping in mind the focus of the study we decided to go with the low O2 conditions provided by the consumption of O2 by cells and… Read more

Great questions..

1. Biggest challenge was to recapitulate out the dynamic microenvironment which vaginal epithelium experience. In this model after several iterations we developed and used the workflow of episodic flow in the epithelium compartment. This helped with growth of epithelium and bacteria.

2. Organ chip provides a great tool to… Read more

Hi Asli, This is a very important question and thank you for asking this.

1. Current models are 2D monolayers, transwell models, bioreactor models. In the discussion section of the paper, we touched base on the limitation of these and especially why these models do not provide an attractive solution for host-microbiome interactions. And of course… Read more

Hi Anthony, Thank you! Great Question.. Current work was focused on utilizing the commercially available chip to support this host-microbiome interactions and therefore we used COMSOL as a tool. I would love to see sensor integration and verify the results. I am confident we will see similar results, a study in the past verified this approach… Read more

Hi Jane, this session is focused on answering question through this forum. Please submit any questions you have and I am more than happy to answer those.

Thank you everyone for submitting their questions.

Reply to @Sasha.. Great Questions:

1. The main focus of the paper is to model host-microbiome interactions and this model can be used to study infection and progression of STI for example gonorrhoea, chlamydia etc. I feel the workflow in the manuscript can be used for these applications with… Read more

A breakthrough in bacterial vaginosis treatment for women’s health

Almost 30% of women globally suffer from bacterial vaginosis at some point, and the condition can cause preterm birth and other life-threatening problems. Our new Vagina Chip models the human vaginal microbiome in vitro, helping identify better treatments.

Check out our p… Read more

Spheroids, 3D tissue constructs, and technologies like Organ-Chips are increasingly recognized as valuable models for myriad purposes. But, labs often use bespoke or modified methods to create a model that specifically fits their needs, such as the addition or subtraction of disease-specific cell lines.

The variability between labs seems… Read more

Hey Daniel, It is great to see growing interest in immune system models on a chip. We modeled lymph node or lymphoid follicle (upto 3 weeks) using Emulate S1 chip and Zoe culture module. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.202103241 show that primary human blood B- and T-lymphocytes autonomously assemble into ectopic LFs when cultured… Read more