Organ-on-a-Chip Technology Traditional drug testing on animals or human cells in petri dishes has limitations. Enter the organ-on-a-chip – a micro-engineered device that mimics the structure and function of human organs. This new idea improves drug testing and enhances the understanding of how medicines function in the body. It has the potential to revolutionise the pharmaceutical industry. Were you aware of Organ-on-a-Chip Technology?

Microphysiological systems: how 'organ on a chip' technology is changing science. To create models of virus infections in a human system so that we can test counter measures such as antivirals or vaccines. When the next pandemic comes along we're just ready to go. We obtain human cells either from commercial sources or from Human biopsies. When they come into the cell, we culture them in a way that encourages them to differentiate into the cells into the structures that we see in the human body. This is through a variety of chemicals and growth factors, growing them at a temperature at which you would expect in a human body. When we infect our organ chip systems we can look for various different readouts of virus infection so this can be as simple as looking down a microscope and looking at the effect that the virus has on the cells. If it's killing the cells that's really quite obvious down a microscope. There are other read outs such as looking at the amount of virus that is being produced by the cells. We can look at the immune response. We can also fix the tissue and stain them in a way that is already done in Vivo studies. We can look to see the same kind of pathology as we see in those tissue samples traditionally we've had to rely on animal models and that has proven a very successful pathway. The future does look like we will be able to use NPS in the future to screen drugs and give us that assurance that they work for humans proven a very successful pathway. Does this new procedure, which eliminates the need for animal testing give you reassurance?

How can we better mimic the physiology of a human organ to support the medicine of the future? Collecting cells from a patient, inserting them onto a chip, in order to conduct much less invasive tests... Such is the principle of organoids-on-a-chip technology, which will make personalized medicine a reality in the future. CEA Grenoble researchers are already working on this. They have successfully succeeded in cultivating pancreas cells, organised in 3D, on a microfluidic chip. Their aim is to examine their properties in view of improving treatments for diabetes and pancreatic cancer. Were you aware of these breakthroughs in new forms of drug testing?