One day after the end of the kick-off meeting of the EU project,
OrganTrans-in which AMIRES is a partner-, speakers from renowned companies and institutions presented the last updates of the state-of-the-art tissue and in vitro disease models technologies during the workshop: “Next Gen Organ-on-chip and Organoids”. AMIRES was represented by the attendance of Dr. Mariana Pacheco Blanco. This insightful set of talks were organized by OrganTrans coordinators, Swiss research and technology organization (CSEM), on Thursday February 6th, in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
When stem cells (precursors of cells) are cultured in a miniaturized and simplified way to represent the complexity of the organ 3D structure and microenvironment are called organoids. In order to mimic the conditions of real organs, the use of micro devices (or chips) have been developed, more substantially in the last decade. During the workshop, through different detailed presentations the audience could have an enhanced understanding of the new technologies using organs on-chip and organoids, mainly in the study of disease models.
The speakers presented data on the validation of the newest technologies of organs on chips, such as liver, intestine, brain, lung, neuronal networks, vascular systems, kidney, muscle. These chips are based on microfluidics, deep machine learning and automatized systems, even tissue printing platforms. The use of these technologies is being used for the characterization, imaging, functional analysis and even drug studies of organs-on chip and organoids. Not only research in human samples were presented but also tissues of other species, namely rats and dogs, which allows the methodology to be more robust.
One of the main goals of the application of these miniaturized tools is to be able to implement a more personalized medicine, a “You-on chip” medicine as OrganTrans coordinator Gilles Weder more accurately described it.
