Bridging the academia-to-industry gap: organ-on-a-chip platforms for safety and toxicology assessment

Terry Ching; Yi-Chin Toh; Michinao Hashimoto; Yu Shrike Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.tips.2021.05.007

Bridging the academia-to-industry gap: organ-on-a-chip platforms for safety and toxicology assessment

Trends Pharmacol Sci. 2021 Sep;42(9):715-728. doi: 10.1016/j.tips.2021.05.007. Epub 2021 Jun 27.

Authors

Terry Ching¹, Yi-Chin Toh², Michinao Hashimoto³, Yu Shrike Zhang⁴

Affiliations

¹ Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Pillar of Engineering Product Development, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487373; Digital Manufacturing and Design Centre, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 4873724; Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117583.
² School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia; Centre for Biomedical Technologies, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, QLD 4059, Australia. Electronic address: yichin.toh@qut.edu.au.
³ Pillar of Engineering Product Development, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487373; Digital Manufacturing and Design Centre, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 4873724. Electronic address: hashimoto@sutd.edu.sg.
⁴ Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Electronic address: yszhang@research.bwh.harvard.edu.

Abstract

Some organ-on-a-chip (OoC) systems for drug evaluation show better predictive capabilities than planar, static cell cultures and animal models. One of the ongoing initiatives led by OoC developers is to bridge the academia-to-industry gap in the hope of gaining wider adoption by end-users - academic biological researchers and industry. We discuss several recommendations that can help to drive the adoption of OoC systems by the market. We first review some key challenges faced by OoC developers before highlighting current advances in OoC platforms. We then offer recommendations for OoC developers to promote the uptake of OoC systems by the industry.

Bridging the academia-to-industry gap: organ-on-a-chip platforms for safety and toxicology assessment

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding