The end of animal testing could finally be near as new smart microchips developed by engineers at the Harvard University promises to render the practice unnecessary.
The new technology, aptly called organs-on-chip, is designed to simulate several human organ functions but on a microscale. These microchips can mimic the lungs, the intestines or the heart, making them ideal for testing cosmetics and drugs without using animal subjects and at lesser costs.
The revolutionary concept behind the Human Organs-On-Chip project was awarded the Design of the Year given by the London's Design Museum. It was able to beat out the self-driving car design developed by Google.
"The microdevices have the potential ability to deliver transformative change to pharmaceutical development and human healthcare due to the accuracy at which they emulate human organ-level functions," the developers of the organs-on-chips said.
"They stand to significantly reduce the need for animal testing by providing a faster, less expensive, less controversial and accurate means to predict whether new drug compounds will be successful in human clinical trials."
To create the Harvard microchips, the developers first had to produce a small plastic block with microchannels coursing through it. They then lined these tubes using a porous membrane with human cells taken from the lungs and several blood vessels.
This membrane layer is used to separate a solution of white blood cells required to kill off body infections from a space where cells of bacteria are kept.
The membranes are then expanded and contracted in order to allow the white blood cells to reach the bacteria cells and attack them, much like how they destroy infections in the body. Scientists would then be able to use the microchips to test the reaction of this immune system to various infectious diseases.
The design for the organs-on-chips was first conceptualized by Donald Ingber, founder of Harvard's Wyss Institute, and Dan Dongeun Huh, a former Wyss Institute developer, back in 2010.
In 2014, scientists from Harvard established a new company named Emulate to commercialize the smart microchips.
"This is a big win towards achieving our Institute's mission of transforming medicine and the environment by developing breakthrough technologies and facilitating their translation from the benchtop to the marketplace," Ingber said.
Last week, Emulate entered a deal with drug manufacturer Janssen to make use of the organs-on-chips for the pharmaceutical firm's research.
The Wyss Institute study is published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
