Reducing the use of animal models as test subjects is seen as desirable to many, but a lack of effective replacements has hindered the achievement of this goal. Now, researchers have taken us one step closer to replacing animal test subjects with a multi-organ “human-on-a-chip” model that contains human-derived heart, liver, skeletal muscle, and nervous system cells. According to a paper published in Advanced Functional Materials, this system can successfully replicate the 28-day experiments typically used in animals to evaluate toxicity of drug and cosmetic compounds.
Organ-on-a-chip models have gained traction in recent years for their effectiveness in mechanism of action validation and acute toxicity screening. However, due to their short half-lives, lack of organ-organ communication, and outcomes that are difficult to extrapolate to human organ functions, these models are unable to replicate chronic exposure conditions necessary to test many products.
The new system was created by researchers at the University of Central Florida in collaboration with the biotech firm Hesperos, Inc. The model was created in a way that allows interactions between its tiny organs, which are cultured in a serum-free blood surrogate solution from real human cells. This allows it to replicate the body’s response to newly introduced compounds and evaluate the electrical activity of neurons as cardiac cells, as well as the mechanics of cardiac and skeletal muscle contractions.
"We have created a valuable tool to model the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics profile of known drugs, in line with ICH (International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use) guidelines," said James J. Hickman, a Professor at UCF's NanoScience Technology Center. "In the future, it could also be used to generate mechanistic models to predict the outcome of unknown drugs, and in other precision medicine applications."
Image: Human-on-a-chip systems aim to reproduce physiologic aspects of the human body by merging human tissue with engineered BioMEMs systems to emulate clinical parameters. This technology opens a broad spectrum of possibilities to better predict the human outcome without having to rely on animal experimentation.