Air Liquid Interface Cell culture versatile chip 

Perform ALI experiments on a 2D or 3D culture with automatic culture medium replacement for systems such as epithelial cultures, toxicity tests, absorption test and much more. 

Create the perfect endothelium endothelium-epithelium barrier: Use the upper well for the 2D or 3D epithelial culture and seed the endothelial cells in the perfusable channel underneath. Most common applications are Blood Brain Barrieer (BBB), gut, skin, lung and many more. 

Crosstalk studies (prototype): Explore the cross-talk of two cultures in an automated and simple way using the BE-Transflow option that connects two wells in the same channel. Most common application are indirect toxicity studies. This air liquid interface cell culture chip is a prototype and is available at a higher price than the normal BE-Transflow. 

BE-Transflow has been designed with ALI in mind. Its an ideal chip for ALI cell culture and coculture research (skin, cornea, gut, lung). However, its simplicity to use makes it also a very useful tool for any coculture research and crosstalk experiments. 

Epidermis/dermis coculture: Recreation of the epidermis and dermis in the well of the BE-Transflow device. In the upper part of the image and marked in blue are the nuclei of the keratinocytes (HEKa) forming the epidermis. The HEKa cells were cultured for 21 days in the ALI air liquid interface to create a mature epidermis. Underneath the epidermis we can see the fibroblasts in red embedded in a collagen matrix, mimicking the dermis. The scale bar marks 100 µm. 

Bone on chip: BEOnchip participates in the Eurostars project BONAFIDE. This project is devoted to the production of a human bone-on-chip platform that will simulate bone growth, resorption and remodeling for future evaluation of (anti-osteoporosis) drugs and biomaterials (e.g. bone cements). 

The air liquid interface cell culture well represents the catabolic side (bone resorption) where the osteoclasts rest in contact with a bonelike scaffold. The lower channel represents the anabolic side of the bone model. This channel is seeded with osteocytes and osteoblast that form a 2D tissue. 

This tissue is mechanically stimulated by the controlled laminar flux applied in the channel, mimicking the physiological environment of the bone. The bone remodeling process is automatically analyzed using image analysis software and biomarker analysis.