If chemical or biological attacks occur, it is essential to have effective antidotes and therapies ready. Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine was awarded $24 million to develop a “Body-on-a-Chip” project to help counteract the effects from a chemical or biological attack. DOD’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency enabled the Naval Warfare Systems Center, Pacific (SSC Pacific) to make the award.
The goal is to build a miniaturized system of human organs to model the body’s response to harmful agents and develop potential therapies. This approach will reduce the need for testing in animals so that expenses are cut, research will produce results faster, and not always require animal testing since the results aren’t always applicable to people.
The “Body-on-a-Chip” concept is possible because of advances in micro-tissue engineering and micro-fluidics technologies and is based on similar accomplishments in the electronics industry. Rather than miniaturizing electronics on a chip, researchers are able to miniaturize human organs.
For example, researchers will use human cells to create tiny organ-like structures to mimic the function of the heart, liver, lung, and blood vessels. Placed on a two inch chip, these structures will be connected to a system of fluid channels and sensors to provide online monitoring of individual organs and the overall organ system.
The research project involves having Wake Forest use one-of-a-kind 3-D printer to print the organoids onto the chip. While the idea of culturing 3D human tissue on a chip is not new, this will be one of the first efforts to combine several organs in the same device to model the human response to chemical toxins or biologic agents.
Other partners contributing to the research include:
- Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston will provide micro and nanoscale bioengineering devices for controlling cellular behavior
- University of Michigan will provide microscale models of the body and biomolecular devices and technologies for high throughput drug testing
- Army Edgewood Chemical Biological will provide chemical warfare agent research, development, engineering, and testing
- Morgan State University will do laboratory testing of cell cultures to identify the ideal blood surrogate
- Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health will do toxicity testing and identification