A research team funded by the National Institutes of Health has developed a laboratory model that replicates the structure and function of human bone marrow, providing new insights into how antibody-producing plasma cells develop and survive. The platform, described as a bone marrow-on-a-chip, combines a tissue organoid mimicking a lymph node with a microfluidic chip that reproduces the bone marrow environment, according to research published in Science Advances.
Plasma cells produce antibodies that protect against infection, but when production malfunctions, they can contribute to autoimmune disease, allergy, or blood cancer. Long-lived plasma cells in bone marrow are essential for maintaining immunity after infection or vaccination, but how these cells migrate and settle in human bone marrow has remained poorly understood.
The model was developed by researchers at Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt University. The Georgia Tech team isolated B cells from human tonsil tissue and blood and grew them in a microenvironment mimicking lymphoid tissue, using inactivated influenza virus to stimulate their transformation into antibody-secreting plasma cells. Vanderbilt researchers engineered the bone marrow chip using a microfluidics-based system that mimics human bone marrow conditions.
The bone marrow chip is assembled within a stack of 96-well plastic plates, each less than half an inch thick, with channels coated in a gel-like material resembling bone marrow tissue and supplied with nutrients and growth factors. The system allows researchers to observe plasma cell behavior in response to signaling proteins and to study how different bone marrow niches affect plasma cell development and durability. The organoid model can eventually be seeded with cells from specific patient populations to study how aging or disease affects plasma cell function.