An organ-on-a-chip is a device created using microchip manufacturing methods. It contains continuously perfused chambers lined by living human cells. The size of a small computer memory stick, this device mimics the biology and functions of real organs and is an upgrade on the existing systems in use today (such as living cells grown in a petri dish). Scientists have already developed different organs-on-chips: the lung, heart, intestine, and liver. Lung-on-a-chip, for example, contains both pulmonary and capillary cells with one side exposed to a blood-like medium and the other to air. This provides scientists with insight into the part of the lung where gas exchange happens. This is the area where pulmonary problems such as infections and cancer often occur. Lung-on-a-chip is flexible, so it stretches and contracts much like a human lung – replicating the function of the living organ. Some commercial companies are now manufacturing chips that replicate a diseased organ as well. Others are focusing on the way drugs – both already approved and newly developed – behave in these devices in comparison to the human body. As pharmaceutical companies agree that investing in chip technology is a worthy pursuit, further investment and subsequent refinements will make organs-on-chips even more useful in the future." Could we have a lab with organs-on-chips in the proposed medical building which will be located on highway 9 in Marlboro Township, New Jersey?
