What is an "organ on a chip"?
In the special report “Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2016”, developed for the World Economic Forum by the Council on Emerging Technologies (Meta-Council of Emerging Technologies), 10 new and promising technological directions in various spheres of our life were identified, which, according to experts, can transform the economy, improve people's lives and even save our the planet.
The list of such technologies included "organs on a chip" – a miniature model of a human organ the size of an ordinary USB stick, which can revolutionize medical research and the development of new drugs, allowing researchers to see the behavior of a biological mechanism in a way that was previously inaccessible to them.
Let's try to briefly understand what it is. In many studies and when testing new drugs on a person, in fact, the person himself is often not needed, it is enough to understand how a certain human organ behaves. Moreover, it is enough to have just a working particle of this organ, and finally a technology has appeared that could provide scientists with a "human organ in miniature", literally on a chip.
The first example of such technology – "lungs on a chip" – was developed in 2010 by Donald Ingber from the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. And very quickly, private and public organizations appeared in this area, including DARPA (U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which individually or jointly began to develop the direction. Reports have already been published that miniature models of lungs, liver, kidneys, heart, bone marrow and cornea have been created.
Each such "organ on a chip" is a device the size of a USB stick, which is made of a flexible and transparent polymer. Inside this polymer are microfluidic tubes, each with a diameter of less than a millimeter and covered from the inside with human cells taken from the organ of interest to researchers. These tubes form a complex structure inside the chip. When nutrients, blood, or test components, such as experimental drugs, are passed through these tubes, the cells in them repeat some of the basic functions of the living organ from which they are taken.
Microfluidic technology is a solution that is implemented in the form of chips with micro–capillaries that connect different stages of laboratory procedures and allow for different manipulations with single cells.
Cavities inside the chip can be created in such a way as to mimic a specific organ tissue structure, such as, for example, miniature air sacs in the lungs. The air passing through these channels can very accurately simulate human breathing. Another example: blood containing bacteria can be pumped through microfluidic tubes, and scientists can thereby observe how cells react to infection, and without risk to humans. I.e., the technology allows scientists to see the biological mechanisms and physiological behavior of a certain human organ, which was previously impossible.
The "organ on a chip" allows for realistic and accurate testing of new drugs. Last year, for example, with the help of such a device, researchers simulated the process of hormone production by endocrine cells into the blood and used this process to conduct crucial trials of a new diabetes drug. Such miniature devices can also be used in personalized medicine. For example, if you create microchips using the patient's stem cells and then use them to test different types of therapy to identify the method that can best help the patient. There are many advantages, we are not able to list them all here. Let's just mention that this technology can save millions of lives of animals that are sacrificed for research every year.
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28.06.2016