Soft, morphable, three?dimensional electronic and microfluidic micro?lab for drug screening in engineered tissues

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences awarded the University of Connecticut $446,875 on August 1, 2026, under the Biomedical Research and Research Training program (CFDA 93.859) to develop a soft, morphable hybrid electronic and microfluidic platform for drug screening in engineered human tissues.

The research focuses on fabricating three integrated components: 3D multimodal electronic sensors (temperature, pressure, stimulation electrodes, and aptamer-based biomarker sensors) to evaluate and modulate organoid functionality in response to tissue growth and dynamic changes; perfusable 3D microvascular networks to deliver oxygen, nutrition, and pharmacological agents to organoids and enable controlled drug screening studies; and soft active materials such as liquid crystal elastomers to support cell manipulation and tissue evaluation. The platform aims to facilitate growth of human organoids with sufficient maturation and structural and functional complexity for drug screening and precision medicine applications.

The University of Connecticut's Office Sponsored Programs, located in Storrs, Connecticut, is the recipient. The award carries a period of performance from August 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031. This is a Project Grant under the R35GM program structure, which supports investigator-initiated biomedical research to advance understanding of human health and disease.

Abstract

Multifunctional electronic and microfluidic technologies have been instrumental in better understanding various processes in modern medicine and biology. The overall goal of my research laboratory is to develop a soft, multifunctional hybrid electronic and microfluidic platform to evaluate and modulate engineered tissues for drug screening. Specifically, experimental techniques and methods have been developed to design and fabricate biophysical and biochemical sensors for multimodal sensing and 3D microfluidics as microvascular networks for engineered tissues, as well as soft active materials (liquid crystal elastomers). This has led to new tools for cell manipulation, tissue evaluation, and drug screening. This proposed research focuses on developing a soft, morphable hybrid electronic and microfluidic platform as a micro-lab to facilitate the growth of human organoids with sufficient levels of maturation and structural and functional complexity for drug screening and precision medicine. Human organoids have emerged as a promising platform for modeling tissue development, personalized medicine development, drug screening, and drug toxicity investigations. In the next five years, i plan to develop my research program in these three directions. The PI will first focus on developing 3D multimodal electronics, including temperature and pressure sensors, stimulation electrodes, and aptamer-based sensors for measuring biomarkers, to evaluate and modulate the functionality of human organoids, in a morphable manner to accommodate tissue growth and dynamic changes. Secondly, the PI will concentrate on developing perfusable 3D microvascular networks for the controlled delivery of oxygen, nutrition, and pharmacological agents to organoids to facilitate the growth of organoids and the study of drug screening. Thirdly, the PI will evaluate the functionality of the developed hybrid platform by studying the effects of three representative drugs using cardiac and brain organoids as model systems. By the end of the five years, the PI anticipates solving important technical challenges to demonstrate the use of microelectronics/microfluidics to measure cell activities in organoids and obtain a clear understanding of drug toxicity with the innovative electronic/microfluidic platform. These outcomes would generate interest from the broad research community and enable others to tackle important challenges in cell biology using the developed platform.