3Rs Training Webinar about Human Bone and Bone-Marrow-on-a-Chip by Melanie Ort, FU Berlin & Charité

On January 10th, 2024 Melanie Jasmin Ort from Freie Universität and Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany presented her work using the Bone-Marrow-on-a-Chip technology.

Abstract:
A Human Bone/Bone-Marrow-on-a-Chip Approach for in vitro culture of human bone marrow and benchmark against clinical reality. Human bone marrow is a very complex tissue and it is not easy to maintain all cell subsets within this organ. In our bone and bone marrow chip we try to combine primary patient tissue, cells and human bone scaffolds to develop a xeno-free test system for various clinical questions. Ranging from the impact of orthopedic implant material on immune cells within the bone marrow, tracking bone metabolism and testing substances on their anti-inflammatory properties on T and B cells of the adaptive Immune system. This has different challenges and projects are advanced to different degrees. Bone cells are easier to culture than immune cells and immune cells are easier to analyze than bone cells in their quantity. The bone and bone marrow chip can be used to show distributions of metal debris from corrosion and wear from implant material. Bone resorbing cells, Osteoclasts, can be cultured from bone marrow and blood cells and seeded onto the chip to test rare diseases and B cell development can be studied in vitro in its “natural habitat”. Therefore interesting protocols and scientific debate surrounds our new non-animal method, of which Melanie Ort will give some insight and ideas what it is like to work with human primary material from the clinic and tissue chip systems. Working in a clinical setting can be challenging in some aspects while it bears a lot of potential, different skill sets are needed to combine patient centered research with basic science.

Bio sketch:
Melanie Jasmin Ort is a biomedical researcher at Freie Universität and Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin. She received her Master’s degree in Biology from the University of Freiburg, Germany. She had the chance to work internationally at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and she was a visiting researcher at Whitehead Institute of biomedical research at MIT, and Harvard medical school Boston, USA. She combines patient-centered studies with animal-free research to decipher the role of adaptive immunity in musculoskeletal regeneration. She develops and applies advanced human 2D and 3D in vitro methods. For this work Melanie received the Early Career Scientist Award from the Animal Protection Commissioner of Berlin in 2021. As part of her research, she works very closely with her colleagues in orthopedic and trauma surgery and actively promotes the use of patient tissues and cells in research to improve the translation of research results into clinical applications. Melanie is also actively involved in teaching non-animal methods and bioethics in regard to animal experiments to PhDs students. She has published in biomedical journals such as Advanced Science, Nature communications and Frontiers of Immunology.

The video editing was made possible through financial support from Bund gegen Missbrauch der Tiere e.V. (bmt). Thank you for your support!