(June 10, 2015) Scientists
in an EU-supported project have developed a microfluidic chip that
simultaneously analyses the reactions of several human organ tissues when they
come into contact with candidates for new drugs. The ground-breaking device
could save millions of euros in drug development costs.
One of the biggest challenges for pharmaceutical companies
is reducing the multi-million-euro cost of drug development and shortening the
time to market of medicines in order to fully exploit them before patents run
out. This led the EU to back an early-stage research project, called
Body-on-a-Chip (BOC), replacing the 2D cell culture conventionally used for
drugs testing with a multi-tissue device that better mimics real-life conditions
in the body, by combining several organ-specific 3D cultures into a single
chip. Researchers then created a prototype BOC to assess the toxicological risk
of new candidate compounds and their effectiveness prior to formal clinical
testing.