Abstract

Nanotechnology Enabling Advanced Organ-on-Chips

Dries Braeken, R&D Manager, Life Science Technologies, IMEC

Drug toxicity is a major challenge for the pharmaceutical industry. Today’s toxicity models are inefficient as they are mainly based on simple in vitro models, or poorly translating animal models. Organs-on-chip promise to better mimic the human physiology, in order to improve toxicity screening in the drug development process. Beyond toxicity screening, OoC devices can also model disease and help develop novel targets. In this presentation, I will highlight how nanotechnology can play a role in these new model systems, and demonstrate heart-on-chip and brain-on-chip devices in development.