Quick Hits: Forget the Organ-on-a-Chip; Now There’s a Human-on-a-Chip

“We serially linked the vascular channels of eight different Organ Chips, including intestine, liver, kidney, heart, lung, skin, blood-brain barrier and brain, using a highly optimized common blood substitute, while independently perfusing the individual channels lined by organ-specific cells,” explained Richard Novak, a researcher involved in the study. “The instrument maintained the viability of all tissues and their organ-specific functions for over three weeks and, importantly, it allowed us to quantitatively predict the tissue-specific distribution of a chemical across the entire system.” A video showing the process can be seen here.