Ben Maoz, Ph.D.
Ben Maoz, Ph.D.
Faculty of Biomedical Engineering
Tel Aviv University
Speech Title: 
Organs-On-a-Chip: A New Tool for the Study of Human Physiology
Abstract: 
Between 60 to 90% of the drugs that successfully pass animal trials fail in human clinical trials. This poor statistic demonstrates the urgent need for a human-relevant model. Micro-engineered cell culture models, termed Organs-on-Chips, have emerged as a new tool to recapitulate human physiology and drug responses. Multiple studies and research programs have shown that Organs-on-Chips can capture the multicellular architectures, vascular-parenchymal tissue interfaces, chemical gradients, mechanical cues, and vascular perfusion of the body. Accordingly, these models can reproduce tissue and organ functionality and mimic human disease states to an extent thus far unattainable with conventional 2D or 3D culture systems. In this talk, we will present two approaches of using this technology. The first, will demonstrate how drug can be tested by linking of 8 human-Organ-on-a-Chip and showing results that are comparable to clinical data. Furthermore, we demonstrate how to exploit the micro-engineering technology in a novel system-level approach to decompose the integrated functions of the neurovascular unit into individual cellular compartments, while retaining their paracellular metabolic coupling. Using individual, fluidically-connected chip units, we have created a system that models influx and efflux functions of the brain vasculature and the metabolic interaction with the brain parenchyma. This model reveals a previously unknown role of the brain endothelium in neural cell metabolism: In addition to its well-established functions in metabolic transport, the brain endothelium secretes metabolites that are directly utilized by neurons. This discovery would have been impossible to achieve using conventional in vitro or in vivo measurements.
Bio: 

Dr. Maoz is a faculty member at the Sagol School of Neuroscience and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Maoz did his Ph.D on nano-optics in the School of Chemistry at Tel Aviv. During his post-doctoral studies, at Harvard University, in Prof. Don Ingber and Kit Parker, he developed Organ-on-a-Chip platforms for studying human relevant physiology.
Dr. Maoz received number of prestigious fellowships, awards and honors, such as the Harvard-Wyss Technology Fellowship, Azrieli Fellowship for Academic Excellence and Leadership, ERC grant, recently he was chosen by “The Marker” as the most promising 40 under 40 and he gave a talk in the first metaverse TedX

More information on the MaozLab can be found in:
https://www.maozlab.com/

The Henry Samueli School of Engineering

Tel Aviv University