ABSTRACT
Organ-on-a-chip devices are microfabricated, biomimetic systems that are designed to model physiological functions of living tissues and organs in vitro [1-3]. These biomimetic systems, which would contain cells and extracellular matrix (ECM) components from human tissues, will recapitulate the microarchitecture and functions of the living tissues or organs. They will also be a valuable tool for multiple applications such as testing the effects of drugs on human organs, toxicity testing, disease modeling and could also revolutionize new drug discovery if adopted by the pharmaceutical industry. The paradigm used by pharmaceutical companies for new drug discovery and development is becoming obsolete due to the high cost, huge investment of money, and time (typically 15-20 years for a single drug discovery, development, and testing). Additionally, the preclinical animal testing process often fails to closely predict drug/toxicity responses in humans. One of the purposes of developing organ-on-a-chip devices is to overcome the current limitations.
