Biomimetic Microengineering Lab
Welcome to the BioME Lab at Cleveland Clinic
The Biomimetic Microengineering laboratory (BioME) focuses on uncovering the fundamental questions in human health and disease by developing innovative, bioinspired engineering principles and applying them to biomedical platform technologies. We utilize the cutting-edge, human “Organs-on-Chips” microphysiological system to create a paradigm-shifting, biomimicking, microfluidic device that recapitulates the structure, function, and physiology of human organs and tissues.
Innovation for
technology translation
in clinics and medicine
This microengineered organ model emulates the complex, mechanically active microenvironment of living human organs, where the host epithelium, the human microbiome, capillary vasculature, and immune components found in vivo can be placed under spatiotemporal control in a miniaturized, complex, three-dimensional microchip. We are particularly interested in reconstituting the host microbiome ecosystem at the community level, which, on a microphysiological scale, is fundamentally associated with the mechanisms of human health and disease.
By encompassing the multidisciplinary approaches of advanced microfluidic technology, microengineering, tissue engineering, and clinical microbiology, we are able to explore precise therapeutics in the age of personalized medicine, more accurately test the efficacy and toxicity of drug candidates by replacing animal models with a human-relevant organ-on-chip system, and study host-microbe crosstalk in situ to discover how our co-evolution with the human microbiome has contributed to our biological complexity as a species.
Maintenance of epithelial barrier function was necessary and sufficient to control the physiological oxidative stress and proinflammatory cascades, suggesting that “good fences make good neighbors.” Thus, the modular gut inflammation-on-a-chip identifies the mechanistic contribution of barrier dysfunction mediated by intercellular host–microbiome cross-talk to the onset of intestinal inflammation.
Shin and Kim, PNAS, 2018. Intestinal barrier dysfunction orchestrates the onset of inflammatory host-microbiome cross-talk in a human gut inflammation-on-a-chip.
Contact
Principal Investigator
Hyun Jung Kim, PhD
kimh19@ccf.org
(216) 445 8148
Lab Location
9500 Euclid Ave.
Cleveland, OH44195, USA
Phone
Lab: (216) 445 8212
BioME Lab at Cleveland Clinic 