Organ-On-A-Chip Technology: An In-depth Review of Recent Advancements and Future of Whole Body-on-chip

• Published in: Biochip journal Vol. 17; no. 1; pp. 1 - 23
• Main Authors: Driver, Rishab, Mishra, Shweta
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Seoul The Korean BioChip Society (KBCS) 01.03.2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Animal models; Animals; Biochips; Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering; Biotechnology; Cell culture; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Clinical trials; Cytotoxicity; Disease; Drug development; Drugs; Failure rates; High-throughput screening; Metabolites; Microfluidics; Pharmaceutical industry; Pharmaceuticals; Phylogeny; R&D; Research & development; Review Article; Target recognition; Toxicity; Microfluidic chip; Toxicity profile; Organ-On-A-Chip; 3D culture; Microfluidics; Physiological model
• ISSN: 1976-0280; 2092-7843
• DOI: 10.1007/s13206-022-00087-8

One of the leading challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry today is the ‘high attrition rate problem’, with a large number of drug candidates being abandoned before reaching the clinical stage. The high failure rate is not only costly for the pharmaceutical industry but also hinders the access of patients to better treatment options. This ever-widening gap can be attributed to the current in-vitro and animal testing techniques for predicting human responses to drug candidates. Two-dimensional (2D) in-vitro cell culture fails to recapitulate key physical and biochemical cues while phylogenetic differences between animal models and humans in key physiological systems make data generated by these platforms unreliable. There have been several solutions proposed but one that has been gaining a lot of prominence are microfluidic-based microsystems able to mimic organs, called ‘Organ-On-A-Chip’ devices and is built upon the principles of microfluidics, material science, and cell biology. Here we delve into the ongoing research involving this platform demonstrating its key strengths and the application of this technology in several key stages of drug discovery such as target identification and high throughput screening. We also discuss the potential, future, and key obstacles that lie in the universal adoption of this technology. Graphical Abstract