THE IDEA

A slice of organ in a chip

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Living human cells

The cell types that make up a tissue, grown in channels

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Flow

Medium moves past the cells, as blood does

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Body-like forces

Shear, stretch and tissue-to-tissue contact

An organ chip recreates the smallest working unit of an organ, not the whole organ.

WHY BUILD THEM?

Drugs keep failing

About 9 in 10 drugs that enter human trials never reach approval, often because of side effects or lack of benefit that earlier tests missed. Cells in a dish lack flow and structure; animals differ from people.

Organ chips aim to fill the gap between a dish and a person.

WHAT CHIPS ADD

More real than a dish

Flow carries nutrients in and waste out. Cells feel shear, and some chips stretch them rhythmically. Two tissues can sit face to face across a thin porous membrane, as they do in the body.

Flow, force and tissue interfaces make cells behave more like they do in the body.

A SHORT HISTORY

From one lung to many organs

In 2010 a Harvard team published a lung-on-a-chip that breathed with cyclic stretch. Funding from U.S. agencies followed, and companies were spun out to sell organ-chip platforms for many tissues.

In about a decade, organ chips went from one paper to an industry.

ANATOMY OF A CHIP

Two channels and a membrane

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Top channel Usually the organ's own cells, such as lung or gut lining

Porous membrane A thin, flexible sheet with holes a few micrometres wide

Bottom channel Blood-vessel cells under flow

Side chambers Vacuum pulls on the walls to stretch the membrane, as breathing does

The classic organ chip is a two-channel sandwich with living tissue on each side.

UNIT 15 STUDY COMPLETE

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Ready for the Fab Challenge?

You've seen what an organ chip is, what it adds over a dish or an animal, and where the idea came from.