Perfusion Grid Platform

In vivo, cells are supplied by blood capillaries. In current in vitro models, transport depends on flow around the tissue and diffusion within it. This creates chemical gradients within the tissue, contributes to necrosis, and limits long-term tissue function.

Livegrid implements a spatially defined grid of permeable microcapillaries embedded within the tissue. Medium flows through these capillaries, allowing solutes to exchange with the surrounding cells across the capillary walls.

Why this is different

Most existing platforms improve access to medium, but they do not perfuse the bulk of a dense solid tissue.

Organoids

Organoids self-organise well, but transport is diffusion-limited. Larger organoids develop hypoxic or necrotic inner regions.

Conventional organ-on-chip systems

Commercial platforms such as membrane-based or lane-based chips can control flow, mechanical cues, and co-culture. However, the flow passes beside, below, or around the tissue. This is acceptable for thin tissues, but it does not allow truly three-dimensional dense tissues, such as brain and liver tissues, to be cultured.

Angiogenic vascularisation systems

Systems based on the self-assembly of endothelial cells can produce biologically relevant vascular networks, but vessel formation is slow and poorly defined. Vascularisation and maintenance of dense tissues larger than 1 mm remains a challenge.

Bioprinting

Bioprinting can pattern vasculature as part of a printed tissue, but it takes days for the vasculature to form a functional capillary network, during which time the tissue remains deprived of adequate nutrient delivery and metabolic waste removal. This remains a fundamental challenge for bioprinting.

Livegrid

Livegrid provides an internal, predefined, perfusable capillary architecture from the start, occupying less than 5% of the tissue volume.

Why tissue scale matters

1. Biological structures (e.g., cortical columns and liver zonation) need sufficient space and cell numbers to emerge. Complex morphogenesis and engineered structures require dense tissues at the multi-millimetre scale. Livegrid tissues can be made as large as the perfusion grid that supports them.
2. For practical applications such as biomarker assays, a larger number of biomarker-producing cells increases the analyte accumulation rate, enabling earlier detection, shorter assay times, and higher throughput.
3. Large, dense tissues are resilient and therefore well suited to studies requiring chronic or repeated exposure to test compounds and longitudinal functional readouts.

Reproducibility and traceability by design

Livegrid is combining perfused tissue culture hardware with guided experimental workflows, real-time monitoring, and run-level traceability.

Each chip and assay run can be linked to its protocol version, experimental stage, operating history, samples, and resulting data. A unique chip identifier and continuous monitoring help detect technical deviations, distinguish platform issues from biological responses, and maintain a reviewable experimental record.

These capabilities are designed to support consistent execution, troubleshooting, and transfer of assays between laboratories.