Organ-on-a Chip is a an promising tool to study various chronic disease such as cancer and autoimmune disorder

 

An Organ-on-a Chip, also known as an organ-on-board, is a fully mobile multi-chambered 3-dimensional microfluidic tissue chip that mimics the internal processes, motions, and biological response of almost all organ systems and whole organs, a kind of living artificial organ. It constitutes the subject matter of major ongoing biomedical research, more especially in bio-MRI.

It has also been used to study different pathological and medical diseases like cancer, inflammatory diseases, autoimmune diseases, sepsis, trauma, neurological disorders, rheumatoid arthritis, herpes, genital herpes, leukemia, and many others.

Organ-on-a Chip is considered to be a tissue microcosm of the human body; it is the miniature version of a mouse or a rat brain and can be compared to a mini-brain. Its main function is as a template for generating living cells, but it can also be used as a drug screening and pre-cancer staging system. It is considered that once such a device is built and operational, it can replace thousands of manual incubators and syringes and allow for tissue culture technologies up to several hundred liters/day. Thus this technology may revolutionize drug development, fertility treatments, cellular technology, and other areas of medical research and practice.

As mentioned before, an Organ-on-a Chip is actually a tissue microcosm, in which live, viable cells are grown in an oxygenated environment (usually boiled seaweed). The cells proliferate, dividing into many more cells that could survive within the body. This is the first application of a living microorganism. The fact that the live cells can be kept alive in an oxygenated environment has obvious applications for life sciences, but the tissue microfluidic culture is far from an end. Other applications will include tissue engineering, cell repopulation, tissue repair, cellular metabolism, cell communication, and others. This versatile device may open up new horizons for pharmaceuticals, and help advance medical practices in all areas.