Research Areas

Microfluidic-based Organ-on-a-chip is an in vitro cell culture model that can be fabricated through photolithography and soft lithography techniques. The Mun lab has set all required equipment, including 3D printers, and has been designing and fabricating novel organ-on-a-chips in house. The Organ-on-a-chip is transparent, portable, and can be connected to a peristaltic pump to perfuse medium or drugs in an automatic manner. The Mun lab has successfully developed pancreas-on-a-chip composed of two cell culture chambers separated by a thin layer of porous membrane. With the pancreas-on-a-chip, his group successfully co-cultured patient-derived pancreatic ductal epithelial cells (PDECs) and islets mimicking in vivo structure and observed defective CFTR function in the PDECs affects reducing insulin secretion from the islets. This finding showed that there was cell-cell communication between PDECs and islets in regulation of insulin secretion in islets, and will help to investigate the pathogenesis of diabetes in CF patients.

3D bioprinting is an emerging technology in the last decade that allows researchers to culture living cells on three-dimensional scaffolds that mimic human organs. The Mun lab has successfully developed a patient-derived human lung airway composed of lung fibroblasts with complex networks and proximal airway epithelial cells fully differentiated into ciliary cells and goblet cells that are lining on the luminal surface of a 3D scaffold. Bioengineered 3D human organs could be useful not only to monitor cell function, cell-cell interaction, and ciliary beat frequency, but also to screen drugs and to test drugs toxicity for drug discovery.

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disorder that can cause by mutations in cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) which is chloride and bicarbonate transport channels. The Mun lab has generated protocols to isolate and culture patient-derived primary cells including lung airway epithelial cells, lung submucosal epithelial cells, intestinal epithelial cells, and pancreatic ductal epithelial cells as well as monitor CFTR function using a short-circuit current assay, swelling assay, and iodide efflux assay. Recently, the Mun lab has also focused on developing biosensors (i.e., pH and chloride) on organ-on-a-chips by a screen-printing technique. Biosensors are powerful tool to monitor CFTR function in real-time.