Organs on a Chip

Had seem examples of this some years ago, to what degree has it been predictively accurate?

Using “organs-on-a-chip” to model complicated diseases
A new approach reveals how different tissues contribute to inflammatory diseases such as ulcerative colitis.

Anne Trafton | MIT News Office

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MIT biological engineers have created a multitissue model that lets them study the relationships between different organs and the immune system, on a specialized microfluidic platform seeded with human cells.

Using this type of model, sometimes called “organs-on-a-chip” or “physiome on-a-chip,” the research team was able to explore the role of circulating immune cells in ulcerative colitis and other inflammatory diseases. They also discovered that a metabolic byproduct generated by bacteria living in the human gut plays an important role under these inflammatory conditions.

“We’ve shown that now you can start to attack some of these really thorny, chronic inflammatory diseases by designing experiments in these organs on chips,” says Linda Griffith, the School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Innovation, a professor of biological engineering and mechanical engineering, and the senior author of the study.

This approach, described today in the journal Cell Systems, could also lend itself to studying many other complex diseases, the researchers say.

“Now we have options to really decrease or increase the level of disease complexity, under controlled and systematic conditions,” says Martin Trapecar, an MIT postdoc and the lead author of the paper.

Complex models

Nearly 20 years ago, Griffith’s lab first began working on a model of the human liver known as the “liver chip.” This system, which consists of engineered human liver tissue grown on a specialized scaffold, can be used to test drug toxicity. More recently, she has been working on small-scale replicas of many interconnected organs, also known as microphysiological systems (MPS). In 2018, she reported the development of a platform that could be used to model interactions between up to 10 organs at a time. .... '