Kidney-on-a-chip

Kidney toxicity represents the most common adverse event resulting from drugs, and its assessment is critical for drug development. The application of two-dimensional (2D) in vitro and animal models to evaluate drug efficacy have their shortcomings due to the lack of representation of in vivo environment for the first, or the difference in drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics response between animals and human for the latter. In this regard, three-dimensional (3D) microfluidic culture platforms such as kidney-on-chip have shown great promise in recapitulating native tissues in vitro. In recent years, significant attempts have also been made in the modeling of kidney diseases to study pathology and characterize potential drugs. Moreover, the fabrication of multiple-kidney components-on-a-chip, wherein different structures and cells interact with each other, remains a major issue. In this chapter, we focus more on the components of kidney-on-chip and the applications of kidney-on-a-chip.