Human Organ-on-Chips

Since the race to find cure for COVID-19 started among different health care industries, it has now become evidently known to everyone that what a long period of extensive testing one novel drug has to take in order to be introduced to the market and finally to the consumer. All drugs developed and available in the market until now had to undergo several trials in order to be deemed safe for human use. One such trial requires these novel drugs to be tested on animals, this is because animals have organs and organs systems that function and react very closely like the human organs and organ systems. Drugs are tested on animal models first then they are tailored subsequently for human consumption. Several animals such as mice, rats, dogs, cats, monkeys, chimpanzees, rabbits, frogs and many other types of animals are killed each year for the sake of medical education experimentation, drug development and testing, food and cosmetic testing and testing of various types of chemicals. Unfortunately these tests have to be conducted in such a manner as there is no other alternative yet available. One such effort to bring a prospective alternate to animal testing is recognized in this article in the form of Human Organ-on-chips as the name of the article suggests. We are now aware of several breakthroughs in the field of biologically inspired engineering. The work in this field is concerned with development of bioinspired substances and devices, to attain sustainability in architecture,healthcare, robotics and many other disciplines. Donald E. Ingber from Yale University is regarded as the founding father of bioinspired engineering. He is the director of WYSS Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Because of having interest in studying cell mechanics and cellular biochemistry and it’s impact on tissue development and tissue structure, he managed to merge concepts from fields such as histology, physics, chemistry, engineering and computer science. Human Organ-on-chip is the brainchild of Donald E. Ingber; it is considered as an artificial organ as it simulates the functions, mechanics and physiological responses of whole organ and organ systems.The principle of this system has its basis in biomedical microelectro mechanical approach (Human Organs-on-Chips, 2014). As some people had ‘potato chips’ in mind when I first brought the name of Human organ-on-chips in my discussion, let me make it clear what sort of ‘chip’ they are comprised of. The chip is made of a transparent polymer which allows real time observation of activities taking place inside this artificial organ. It is a 3D microfluidic cell culture chip containing cells from the desired organ. It contains multiple channels for flow of blood and air to and fro. Imagine a mint flavoured Fox crystal candy with many tubes coming out of it, a channel runs through the middle, a porous membrane present in the middle of this channel divides it into compartments, one compartment has desired organ cells embedded while the other compartment has blood capillary cells embedded on the surface. Air is flowed from one side while blood from the other side, and to simulate the circulatory and breathing mechanism in our bodies, along with this the organ cells are put through stretching and flexing motion as well that provides the dynamic environment of a cell. This allows us to see the activities happening inside our bodies on a molecular level and exclusively happening inside humans, as animal models differ from humans as well as among themselves, hence the reason drugs give different responses in different animal models. So far heart, lung, kidney, artery, bones, cartilage, and skin; and organ systems such as digestive and respiratory system have been simulated inside these revolutionary chips (TEDXBoston, 2013). Imagine what an effortless and relatively shorter period drug testing would take when these systems become validated and optimized!
Human Organ-on-Chips open the doors for development of personalized medicine, disease modelling and can decrease the time of drug development largely (TEDXBoston, 2013). Disease modelling will allow us to conduct experiments on different kinds of diseases blatantly without feeling the guilt experienced in animal testing. It’s true that different researchers will take different approaches on designing these chips, but the advantages would remain the same and will weigh considerably more than the disadvantages.
 References
Human Organs-on-Chips. (2014). Retrieved from
Wyss Institute:
https://wyss.harvard.edu/technology/humanorgans-on-chips/
TEDXBoston. (2013, June). Body parts on a chip.
Retrieved from Ted.com:
https://www.ted.com/talks/geraldine_hamilton_body_parts_on_a_chip?language=en

By: Maheen Shamim