HARVARD UNIVERSITY, MASSACHUSETTS, USA. Researchers are currently developing a “lung-on-a-chip” technology which is designed to mimic a life-threatening lung condition. They also claimed that some new aspects of the disease that cannot be found with the typical animal experiments may be uncovered with the use of the lung chip technology. The study is not limited to the lungs as the institute’s organ-mimicking chips also include a gut, a heart, and a kidney which may be used model a particular disease. At some point, it may also test candidate drugs to treat a particular disease on each organ.

The current lung-on-a-chip device is a thumb-sized block of polymer which is flexible, clear and is pierced by two small channels with a thin membrane in between. One channel is lined with human lung cells while air flows right through it. At the same time, the other channel is lined with blood-vessel cells while blood substitute flows through it. To re-create the natural breathing process of a human, vacuum is applied to make the lung tissues physically contract and expand.

Dongeun Huh led the study. Together with his team of researchers, they we discovered that the immune system was not needed to cause the leakage side effects when they tested a common cancer drug on the lungs. They also discovered that the leakage side effects actually got worse when they turned on the vacuum to re-create the breathing process in the lungs. The objective of this study is to find alternatives to using real animals such as mice for medical tests. At the same time, they also aim to find a way to create chips that will be capable of mimicking the whole human response one day.