In a demonstration of where the field of organ-on-a-chip technology is inevitably going, MIMETAS, a company developing organ-on-chip technology out of Leiden, The Netherlands, and Roche, the giant pharmaceutical company, teamed up to grow and test 350 perfused gut tubes within a matter of days. The gut tubes replicate the basic structure of an intestine and should help to study how drugs and other compounds affect them.
MIMETAS developed a device called an OrganoPlate that was used to grow 350 perfused gut tubes in about four days. These grown tubes were leak free and an imaging system was used to detect whether leaks developed following the introduction of different chemical compounds. Obviously, if the compound damages the tubes that are made of human cells, it will probably do the same in a human gut.
MIMETAS and Roche believe that this technology is ready for introduction into laboratories to speed up drug testing, and maybe even helping to reduce the dependence on animal models during some of the process.
Study in Nature Communications: Membrane-free culture and real-time barrier integrity assessment of perfused intestinal epithelium tubes…
Via: MIMETAS…