The Wyss Institute’s human organs-on-chips team has used the lung-on-a-chip (pictured) to study drug toxicity and potential new therapies. The technology will be commercialized to accelerate development of pharmaceutical, chemical, cosmetic, and personalized medicine products. Credit: Harvard’s Wyss Institute
Credit: Harvard’s Wyss Institute
We’ve been reporting over the last few years on Harvard’s Wyss Institute’s efforts to develop small devices able to mimic various genetic, biochemical, and metabolic characteristics of human organs. This technology can help in performing pre-clinical trials of drugs, help assess the toxicity of chemical compounds, and speed up many aspects of medical research. Now the Wyss Institute is spinning off a company called Emulate to commercialize this technology and put it in the hands of scientists the world over.
Not only does the technology expand research capabilities and speed up testing, it helps avoid using animals for research while allowing for focused studies that are difficult to perform in living animal models.
The team behind the technology published a seminal paper in Science in 2010 that described a chip able to replicate the functional alveolar-capillary interface of the human lung. Since then about a dozen more organ-on-chip devices have been developed that emulate the functionality of the liver, gut, kidney, and bone marrow.
Flashbacks: Scientists Develop Bone Marrow-On-A-Chip, Hope to Replace Animals in Pre-Clinical Research…; Sony Backing Organ-on-Chip Technology…; Living and Breathing Lung on a Chip…
Link: Emulate homepage…
Harvard: Wyss Institute’s organs-on-chips develops into new company…