Organs-on-a-chip: a new tool for drug discovery

Abstract

Introduction: The development of emerging in vitro tissue culture platforms can be useful for predicting human response to new compounds, which has been traditionally challenging in the field of drug discovery. Recently, several in vitro tissue-like microsystems, also known as ‘organs-on-a-chip’, have emerged to provide new tools for better evaluating the effects of various chemicals on human tissue.

Areas covered: The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the organs-on-a-chip systems that have been recently developed. First, the authors introduce single-organ platforms, focusing on the most studied organs such as liver, heart, blood vessels and lung. Later, the authors briefly describe tumor-on-a-chip platforms and highlight their application for testing anti-cancer drugs. Finally, the article reports a few examples of other organs integrated in microfluidic chips along with preliminary multiple-organs-on-a-chip examples. The article also highlights key fabrication points as well as the main application areas of these devices.

Expert opinion: This field is still at an early stage and major challenges need to be addressed prior to the embracement of these technologies by the pharmaceutical industry. To produce predictive drug screening platforms, several organs have to be integrated into a single microfluidic system representative of a humanoid. The routine production of metabolic biomarkers of the organ constructs, as well as their physical environment, have to be monitored prior to and during the delivery of compounds of interest to be able to translate the findings into useful discoveries.

Keywords::

• biomimicry
• body-on-a-chip
• drug discovery platforms
• in vitro models
• in vitro reactors
• metabolic biomarkers
• microenvironment
• microfluidics
• organs-on-a-chip
• sensors
• tissue engineering

Acknowledgement

A Polini and L Prodanov contributed equally to this work.

Declaration of interest

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA; X.C.E.L Program N66001-13-C-2027). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the awarding agency. The authors acknowledge also funding from the Office of Naval Research Young National Investigator Award, the National Institutes of Health (HL092836, DE019024, EB012597, AR057837, DE021468, HL099073, EB008392), and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

Notes

This box summarizes key points contained in the article.