Researchers from IIT Bombay and the ICMR-National Institute for Research on Women's Health have developed a placenta-on-chip that closely mimics the human placenta. This offers scientists a new way to study how drugs, nutrients, pollutants and infectious agents pass from mother to baby. Although it remains a laboratory research tool that requires further validation, researchers believe it could accelerate the development of pregnancy-safe therapeutics and provide new insights into conditions such as gestational diabetes, foetal growth restriction and pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure that damages organs).

The human-cell-based platform recreates several key structural and functional features of the placenta and could reduce dependence on animal models, which often fail to accurately replicate human pregnancy. The study was led by researchers Anshul Bhide and Sourav Mukherjee under the supervision of Professor Deepak Modi (ICMR-NIRWoH) and Professor Abhijit Majumder (IIT Bombay).

Why is a placenta model significant?

The placenta is one of the most critical organs in pregnancy. Yet it is one of the least understood. It supplies oxygen and nutrients to the foetus, removes waste products, produces hormones essential for sustaining pregnancy and acts as a selective barrier, determining what passes from the mother’s bloodstream to the developing baby. How well the placenta functions influences foetal growth, pregnancy outcomes and the safety of medicines prescribed during pregnancy.

What is a placenta-on-chip?

Despite its name, it is not an electronic computer chip. It is a transparent plastic device containing a porous membrane on which researchers grow human placental cells alongside human endothelial cells, which line blood vessels. Together, these recreate the interface through which nutrients, hormones and other molecules are exchanged between mother and foetus.

What makes this model different?

Bhide says the team demonstrated how the device reproduces the placenta’s cellular architecture, produces the pregnancy hormone beta-human chorionic gonadotropin (ß-hCG), mimics glucose transport from mother to foetus, and forms a functional barrier capable of selectively transporting molecules while reproducing several physiological functions of the human placenta. “Our device is able to mimic the human placenta at structural, cellular, hormonal and functional levels. We also recreated the process by which urea is transported back into the maternal blood.”