A team of scientists from the National Institutes of Health, the Wayne State University School of Medicine and the Detroit Medical Center have developed what they call a placenta-on-a-chip to study the inner workings of the human placenta and its role in pregnancy. The device mimics the structure and function of the human placenta and the transfer of nutrients from mother to fetus. A study about the chip, "Placenta-on-a-Chip: A novel platform to study the biology of the human placenta," was published this morning in the Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine. "We believe that this system may be used to address questions that are difficult to answer with the current placenta model systems and serve to enable research in pregnancy and its complications," Roberto Romero, M.D., chief of perinatology research and a professor at the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics at Wayne State and an attending physician at the DMC, said in a release. The prototype is the latest in a series of "organ-on-a-chip" technologies developed to accelerate biomedical advances. "The placenta-on-a-chip platform represents a remarkable new methodology and model to study the role and biology of the human placenta," said Jack Sobel, M.D., dean of the Wayne State University School of Medicine.

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20150618/NEWS/150619848/wsu-dmc-researchers-create-placenta-on-a-chip
http://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news/newsid=40476.php