‘Lung-on-a-chip’ crowned as this year’s ‘Design of the Year’ by London’s Design Museum is on the verge of creating a revolutionary change in the pharmaceutical industry. The design, developed by the Wyass Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, is a simulation of the biological processes going inside the human lung.
This model organ is a small chunk of see-through silicone that is lined with living human cells and mimics the mechanical motions and tissue structures of human organs which in turn could help in accelerating drug discovery, reducing the need for animal testing and decrease development costs. This all can lead consequently to a future of personalised medicines.
Don Ingber, founding director of the Wyass Institute opines: “The organs-on-chips allow us to see biological mechanisms and behaviours that no one knew existed before. We now have a window on the molecular-scale activities going on in human organs, including things that happen in human cells that don’t occur in animals. Most drug companies get completely different results in dogs, cats, mice and humans, but now they will be able to test the specific effects of drugs with greater accuracy and speed.”
Ingber along with his team has developed a number of organs-on-chips like kidney, liver and peristaltic-gut-on-chip, till date. Skin-on-a-chip is currently in its developmental phase for the cosmetics industry. And according to him, the different organs can also be joined in a network to study the journey of a blood in a simulated human body, for example, the effect of an aerosol drug dispensed through an asthma inhaler on lungs, heart, liver and kidneys and its side effects.
This is the first time that a design from the field of medicine has bagged this award. Paola Antonelli, design curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, who nominated the project for the award said: “This is the epitome of design innovation.”
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Author: Technology and Beyond
