Sonia Frojdenfal, MSc. Eng.
Title of Ph.D. thesis: An advanced Liver-on-Chip model for evaluating factors causing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and assessing cellular response to drugs.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has rapidly become the most common liver disease worldwide and is now reported to affect 38% of the world’s population. Investigating the physiological and pathological processes of the liver at the cell-to-cell and cell-to-extracellular matrix levels carries the possibility of evaluating therapeutic scenarios. The work plans to design a Liver-on-Chip system, optimize the obtaining of advanced three-dimensional and multicellular liver models, optimize appropriate flow culture conditions for the liver model, induce non-alcoholic steatosis of the liver, and use several candidate substances as drug components. In addition, it is planned to analyze cells taken directly from NAFLD patients.