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According to the Human Society International 115 million animals are used in Lab experiments worldwide but what if they didn't need to be? What if we didn't need real organs to test drugs? These are organs on chips.
Today we are at Bostan at Harvard's Visa Institute for biological Engineering. Since 1950 the number of approved drugs in the US has been decreasing even though we're spending more money then ever on pharmaceuticals. And before the drugs is given to any actual human being, in a clinical trial they have to go through a lenthy process of lab and animal testing. Right now the biologists will spend 500 million easily or billions. 15 years get to the clinical trial, have many thousands of patients and fail at the drug development model which lay broken.
Dr.Amber likes a challenge. When he was at Yale, he was studying molecular biology. But there was something that caught his eye. There were students walking around campus with structures that look like jewels are doing geodesic dome type structures and and he asked them that what was it? They said oh! It's in an art. They said it's and three dimensional design. He walked his way into that art by explaining to the proffesor that those sculpture reminded him of something. He was learning that at the level of molecules it's the shape on the molecule that dictates it's function.
So on the first day of his class, the proffesor hands out some wooden dowels and finishing line. He told the class to make an object out of them, but the sticks can't touch. They could only pull them up into a 3D shape by strings that is has to hold itself open. The proffesor left at first nothing happened but all of a sudden somebody who might have seen the sculptures of Kenneth Snelson who built this structures called tensegrities tensional. Degra build a 3-stick structure and it's kind of wild it's like you don't think it's possible. The proffesor had another model out one that could collapse and pop back into shape. It led him the organs on chips. So, here's an example how a lung on a chip is used.
Here in the middle there are tiny tiny channels that can be filled with fluids and this small scale. Fluids behave in some interesting ways. There is even a special name for it. Micro fluidics in these tiny channels do not mix with each other. They stay separated by a small membrane but they can still interact with each other. Scientists fill one side with air and another side with liquid that simulates blood. On the blood side there are real white blood cells, on the air side there are human lung cells. The air and the blood pass through the channel and while that's happening, the sides expand and contract. This simulates breathing and these are the kinds of forces.
This means subjecting animals to the dangers of untested drugs many of those test don't even predict how the drugs will work in humans which can lead to drug failing in the clinical trials. The great thing about the organ on chip is that you could work on the mechanism that how it works on the humans as opposed to work on mouse. And infact it is different in UV and that could help to speed up the development of drugs and identify the problems with them much earlier. This could be crucial in the case of an outbreak or an epidemic.
On top of all of that most of the drugs are developed to be one size. It fits that is not always the best approach. Organs on chips that could help to change that in the future. It could be your cells on the chip. Clinical trials still requires time and care to get it right after all making sure. Drugs are safe in the humans in the whole reason the process exists but if organ on chip still speeds up that process at all or bypass putting animals at risk they could be really beneficial.
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