But more important than how an individual organ responds to drugs is how the body as a whole responds. In many cases during testing of new drug candidates - and sometimes even after the drugs have been approved for use - drugs have unexpected toxic effects in tissues not directly targeted by the drugs themselves.

"If you screen a drug in livers only, for example, you're never going to see a potential side effect to other organs," said Skardal. "By using a multi-tissue organ-on-a-chip system, you can hopefully identify toxic side effects early in the drug development process, which could save lives as well as millions of dollars."


The scientists conducted multiple scenarios to ensure that the body-on-a- chip system mimics a multi-organ response. For example, they introduced a drug used to treat cancer into the system. Known to cause scarring of the lungs, the drug also unexpectedly affected the system's heart. However, a control experiment using only the heart showed no response.

The scientists theorize that the drug caused inflammatory proteins from the lung to be circulated throughout the system. As a result, the heart increased beats and then later stopped altogether, indicating a toxic side effect.

"This was completely unexpected, but it's the type of side effect that can be discovered with this system in the drug development pipeline," Skardal said.

Scientists are working to increase the speed of the system for large scale screening, and also to add additional organs.

"Eventually we expect to demonstrate the utility of a body-on-a-chip system containing many of the key functional organs in the human body," said Atala. "This system has the potential for advanced drug screening and also to be used in personalized medicine - to help predict an individual patient's response to treatment."

Several patent applications comprising the technology described in the manuscript have been filed.

Back to HCB News

Pathology Homepage