Why it matters: Cells grown on the Wyss Institute's organ-on-chip devices behave more like cells in the body. The devices could improve the speed and success of drug discovery and reduce animal testing.
The way pharmaceutical companies test drugs is broken, and Donald Ingber has an idea for how to fix it.
Scientists typically test potential pharmaceuticals on animals, but more often than not, "the predictions from animals fail when a compound is tested in humans," says Ingber, director of Harvard University's Wyss Institute. Performing initial tests on people, of course, is too dangerous. "Our proposed solution is to do studies with human cells," he says, "but not just cells in a dish—cells that exhibit organlike structures and functions."
To read the full, original article click on this link: Building an Organ on a Chip - Technology Review
