System On Chip Is Passe. Lung On Chip Is The New It.

It’s an artificial lung the on a microchip; a living, breathing lung the size of a rubber eraser. This lung is made from lung and blood vessel cells and is transparent so as to enable surgeons and doctors to see through it into the inner workings of the lung. The creation of this lung takes a new approach to tissue engineering by placing two layers of living tissues—the lining of the lung’s air sacs and the blood vessels that surround them—across a porous, flexible boundary. It also has the potential to be a valuable tool for testing the effects of environmental toxins and the safety and efficacy of new drugs. This could increase and quicken pharmeceutical development, thus, reducing its cost.
“The ability of the lung-on-a-chip device to predict absorption of airborne nanoparticles and mimic the inflammatory response triggered by microbial pathogens, provides proof-of-principle for the concept that organs-on-chips could replace many animal studies in the future,” says Donald Ingber, senior author on the study and founding director of Harvard’s Wyss Institute. The Wyss Institute team is also working to build other organ models, such as a gut-on-a-chip, as well as bone marrow and even cancer models. Further, they are exploring the potential for combining organ systems.

[via Harvard Science]