via Imperial College London
Scientists at Imperial College London have become the first in the world to test how pathogens interact with artificial human organs.
Artificial human organs, or organ-on-chip technologies, simulate a whole organ’s cell make up and physiology. They act as alternatives to animal models in drug safety testing, but until now they have not been used to test how infectious diseases interact with the organs.
Our work represents the next frontier in the use of this technology.
Dr Marcus Dorner Lead author
Now, researchers from Imperial are using this technology to determine how pathogens interact with artificial organs. They hope it will help us to better understand the resulting disease and develop new treatments.
In particular, the team used an artificial liver – originally developed at MIT, the University of Oxford, and biotechnology company CN Bio Innovations – and tested its response to hepatitis B virus infection.
Dr Marcus Dorner, lead author from Imperial’s Department of Medicine, said: “This is the first time that organ-on-a-chip technology has been used to test viral infections. Our work represents the next frontier in the use of this technology. We hope it will ultimately drive down the cost and time associated with clinical trials, which will benefit patients in the long run.”
Opportunities for future drug development
Hepatitis B virus is currently incurable, and affects over 257 million people worldwide. Development of a cure has been slow because there is no model system in which to test potential therapies.
However, the Imperial team showed that the liver-on-a-chip technology could be infected with hepatitis B virus at physiological levels and had similar biological responses to the virus as a real human liver, including immune cell activation and other markers of infection. In particular, this platform uncovered the virus’s intricate means of evading inbuilt immune responses – a finding which could be exploited for future drug development.
Although this technology is in its early stages, the researchers suggest that it might eventually enable patients to have access to new types of personalised medicine. Rather than using generic cells lines, doctors in the future could potentially use cells from an actual patient and test how they would react to certain drugs for their infection, which may make treatments more targeted and effective.
The benefits of using organs-on-chips
Organs-on-chips house live human cells on scaffolds that are physiologically, mechanically, and structurally similar to the emulated organ. Drugs or viruses are passed through the cells via tubes that simulate blood flow through the body. The living cells used in tests last much longer on the chip than in traditional laboratory methods, and require lower infection doses compared to traditionally used model systems.
Hepatitis B is very infectious and causes liver cancer and cirrhosis. Thus, the researchers say, it was the best virus to use for the first test as its interactions with the immune system and liver cells are complex, but with devastating consequences for the tissues.
Dr Dorner said: “Once we begin testing viruses and bacteria on other artificial organs, the next steps could be to test drug interaction with the pathogens within the organ-on-chip environment.”
Other organs-on-chips currently in use include the heart, kidneys, and lungs. The authors say using these artificial organs for human pathogens could help researchers to better understand the mechanisms of infectious disease, and to observe how the virus and cells in the organ interact. This could lead to new drugs and treatments for a number of diseases affecting different organs in the future.
Learn more: Organ-on-chip technology enters next stage as experts test hepatitis B virus
The Latest on: Artificial human organs
-
April 18, 2018 - or decades, transplant surgeons have treated organs as if they were beers for a camping trip: You just pack them in a cooler and hit the road. But livers, it turns out, aren't much like lagers, and might benefit from a different sort of travel. The ...
-
Green bioprinting grows from tissue engineering - physicsworld.com
April 18, 2018 - Computer-controlled 3D printing is now enabling the custom manufacture of many different products and structures, including tissue scaffolds that are designed to grow artificial tissues and organs in the lab. Researchers are busy exploring the ...
-
LISTEN: 3D printed organs and the future of health care - Globalnews.ca
April 17, 2018 - The future is here. A team of researchers led by the University of Minnesota has 3D printed lifelike artificial organ models that mimic the structure, mechanical properties, look and feel of real organs. How close are we to being able to print the ...
-
April 16, 2018 - The results, published in January 2017, highlighted the first time an inter-species organ transplant successfully treated a medical condition. Professor Nakauchi reported the results of his scientific projects nine years ago, before they were ever ...
-
Queen Mary awarded funding to establish organ-on-a-chip UK network - QMUL (press release) (blog)
April 16, 2018 - The network will be part of a major new Research Councils UK (RCUK) funding venture, Technology Touching Life, which aims to foster interdisciplinary research into innovative technology in the health and life sciences. Organ-on-a-chip devices are ...
-
April 14, 2018 - Global Artificial Organs Market – Segmented by Organ Type and Geography – Growth, Trends and Forecasts (2018 – 2023) : The global artificial organs market report covers artificial organs that are manmade applications integrated into the human body, to ...
-
April 10, 2018 - Artificial organs, as the name suggests, are unnatural devices or machines that replace various human organs, which suffer from malfunctioning or the loss of entire functioning ability. Usually formed from the respective human's stem cells and later ...
-
Frontiers in biofabrication - physicsworld.com
April 6, 2018 - The remarkable progress in 3D bioprinting is now allowing scientists to fabricate artificial tissues and organs that could one day be implanted into the human body. This series of reports offers an insight into some of the most exciting recent advances ...
-
Artificial Organs Market Comprehensive Overview by 2026 - Pharmaceuticals News
March 29, 2018 - Artificial organs, as the name suggests, are unnatural devices or machines that replace various human organs, which suffer from malfunctioning or the loss of entire functioning ability. Usually formed from the respective human's stem cells and later ...
-
A ‘breakthrough in organ preservation’: Study shows keeping livers warm helps preserve them for transplant
on April 18, 2018 at 11:17 am
The alternative that researchers have come up with is a machine designed to mimic the environment of the human body ... paper in Science about his “artificial heart,” which cycled liquid into the chambers to keep the organ pumping. […]
-
Combination of AI, 3D printing software produces detailed organ models
on April 18, 2018 at 5:54 am
Harvard Medical School researchers in collaboration with bioprinting firm Aether recently introduced a 3D printing software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to reproduce medical images of organs as 3D ... editing tools or human intervention. […]
-
Beyond sci-fi: Building the bionic body
on April 17, 2018 at 5:00 am
But over the past few years scientists have created fully working body parts that provide sensory feedback, like a bionic ear, as well as bionic organs, like a pancreas and kidney. Many of these bionic body parts are still in the early stages of production ... […]
-
LISTEN: 3D printed organs and the future of health care
on April 16, 2018 at 6:50 pm
A team of researchers led by the University of Minnesota has 3D printed lifelike artificial organ models that mimic the structure ... joined CKNW’s Lynda Steele on Monday to discuss the Human X project. He says the cutting edge work they’re doing ... […]
-
Controversial plans to grow human organs inside ANIMALS set to go ahead in Japan as officials claim benefits outweigh the risks
on April 16, 2018 at 9:49 am
Controversial plans to grow human organs inside the bodies of animals have moved one ... Scientists already have to follow strict safety and health guidelines when undergoing artificial reproductive technologies. Pigs have to be raised in a clean ... […]
-
New Biomedical Company Helps Train Clinicians and Test Medical Equipment
on April 16, 2018 at 8:11 am
the researchers quickly realized that the combination of their technology and the medical gel could be used to model many aspects of the human body, including organs. The team has begun investigating the possibility of inserting an artificial liver ... […]
-
Report explores the global artificial organs market
on April 13, 2018 at 4:22 am
Artificial organs are mechanically or electronically engineered device and tissue, which are used to integrate in human body to interface with living tissue or to replace with damaged organs or to augment specific organs function. An artificial organ helps ... […]
-
New medical simulation center gives students and physicians fresh perspectives on the human body
on April 6, 2018 at 9:53 am
The approach takes advantage of both hands-on and virtual techniques from advanced imaging and computational methods and phantoms, which are organs generated ... materials and human gifts. The separation of these has been artificial and not good for ... […]
-
Want a Penfield Mood Organ? This Scientist Might Be Able to Help
on April 5, 2018 at 8:22 am
Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Deckard turns to his Penfield Mood Organ, a bedside digital device ... with a lot of emphasis on philosophy and systems, with the human-in-the-loop aspect of artificial intelligence. Plus, not that anyone ... […]
-
Mini-human brains with their own BLOOD VESSELS are grown in the lab for the first time in a breakthrough that could help stroke victims
on April 5, 2018 at 2:13 am
The least understood of all human organs is the brain, and the miniature lab versions ... A young boy was cured of his skin condition with artificial skin that was grown in a lab and then applied to his body. Mice with excess cartilage have been grown ... […]
via Google News and Bing News
