ENGINEERINGNET.BE – Organ chips are mainly used by researchers to better understand how cells behave in their microenvironment or how diseases develop.
There is no question of large-scale use by pharmaceuticals because there is no universal standard. There are many types of chips, each with a different design, size and material.
Ten research groups from 8 universities, united in the Dutch organ-on-chip consortium hDMT, now want to change this. They do this together with 21 companies, 3 knowledge institutions and 2 foundations.
The aim is to develop a standardized and modular platform for organ chips: the ‘SMART Organ-on-Chip’. The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research awarded 3.4 million euros. The partners invest 1.4 million euros in the project.
In order to standardize the chips, the researchers build a ‘docking’ plate with a standard size, which contains the liquid channels and the electronics. Then the chips can be clicked on as modules, in any desired combination.
The system is consistent with pharmaceutical processes and biomedical R&D. For example, to be able to work with pipetting robots and complex microscopic techniques.
It will also become an accessible ‘open technology’, so that other companies can develop their own applications and add them to the existing platform.
The researchers focus in particular on the development of scar tissue: fibrosis. Fibrosis sometimes progresses to proliferating connective tissue growths in organs. The environment of the organ plays a major role in this.
It is therefore crucial to include that environment in organ chips when studying this process. The team is now building tissue chips from the gut, skin and joints to study the processes at the system level.
Partners include Amsterdam UMC / VUmc, TU Delft, TU Eindhoven, UMC Utrecht, ULeiden, UTwente, WUR, 300MICRONS, Applikon, BioLamina, Convergence, Demcon, Hy2Care, OnePlanet Research Center / imec, TNO and Unilever.
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