Organs-on-chips: a decade of innovation
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Updated: Aug 13, 2025
Generation of a Human iPSC-Based Blood-Brain Barrier Chip
Published on: March 2, 2020
Carly Strelez1, Hannah Y Jiang2, Shannon M Mumenthaler3
1Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Abstract:
Recreating 'living organs' with groundbreaking organ-on-a-chip (OOC) technologies is facilitating a new era of drug discovery. Studies by Huh et al. and Ronaldson-Bouchard et al. underscore advances made over a decade, spanning single organ functionality to interconnected organs, that enable examination of drug toxicities and disease pathogenesis in reconstituted tissues.
Insights
Organ-on-a-chip technologies are revolutionizing drug discovery by recreating living organs. These advanced systems allow for better examination of drug toxicities and disease development in engineered tissues.
Area of Science:
- Biotechnology
- Drug Discovery
- Tissue Engineering
Background:
- Organ-on-a-chip (OOC) technology represents a significant advancement in biological research.
- Over the past decade, OOC systems have evolved from single organ models to complex interconnected organ networks.
Purpose of the Study:
- To highlight the progress and potential of OOC technologies in drug discovery.
- To demonstrate the utility of OOC models in studying drug toxicities and disease pathogenesis.
Main Methods:
- Development and utilization of advanced organ-on-a-chip platforms.
- Engineering of single and multi-organ systems for physiological relevance.
Main Results:
- OOC technologies enable the recreation of 'living organs' with high fidelity.
- These models facilitate the examination of drug effects and disease mechanisms in reconstituted human tissues.
Conclusions:
- Organ-on-a-chip systems are ushering in a new era for pharmaceutical research and development.
- The ability to model complex biological processes in vitro accelerates the understanding of drug efficacy and safety.
