" Microchips lined by living human cells ! "
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Development of new prescription drugs and antidotes to toxins currently relies extensively on animal testing in the early stages of development, which is not only expensive and time consuming, it can give scientists inaccurate data about how humans will respond to such agents. But what if researchers could predict the impacts of potentially harmful chemicals, viruses or drugs on human beings without resorting to animal or even human test subjects? To help achieve that, a team of scientists and engineers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is developing a “human-on-a-chip,” a miniature external replication of the human body, integrating biology and engineering with a combination of microfluidics and multi-electrode arrays. The project, known as iCHIP (in-vitro Chip-based Human Investigational Platform), reproduces four major biological systems vital to life: the central nervous system (brain), peripheral nervous system, the blood-brain barrier and the heart.
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How do you study something as complex as the human brain? Take it apart. Wyss researchers have created Organ Chips that mimic the blood-brain barrier and the brain and, by linking them together, discovered how our blood vessels and our neurons influence each other.
Dave Trumper from MIT and Jared Kirschner, Senior Software and Electrical Engineer from demonstrate their preclinical research platform for predicting safety, efficacy, and movement of drugs and vaccines in the body
Wyss Institute researchers and a multidisciplinary team of collaborators have adapted computer microchip manufacturing methods to engineer microfluidic culture devices that recapitulate the microarchitecture and functions of living human organs, including the lung, intestine, kidney, skin, bone marrow and blood-brain barrier, among others.
These microdevices, called ‘Organs-on-Chips’ (Organ Chips), offer a potential alternative to traditional animal testing.
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I of IV: brain on a chip
II of IV : human organs on a chip
III of IV : Organs on a chip - Wyss institute research
IV of IV: How toxoplasma gondi makes past the blood brain barrie
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