Organs-on-chips microfluidic systems would have a significant impact on the future of the pharmaceutical industry by streamlining the drug discovery process and pretesting efficacy and toxicity before animal experiments. It is one of the major goals to replace animal models, which is also one of the biggest challenges. Currently the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries are facing increasing costs on research and development, dwindling pipelines, and pressure from public hygiene policy to reduce health care costs . Currently, animal test is required for determination of therapeutic efficacy and safety. The disadvantages of animal test, including high cost, time-consumption, and requirement of large amount of compounds make it one of the major bottlenecks. Moreover, the traditional animal testing approaches often fail to predict human toxicity and efficacy , and often question the ethics of sacrificing animals if they cannot predict clinical outcomes reliably. Therefore, there is intense pressure to find efficient means in which to improve the success of the drug development process, and identify suitable alternatives that can supplant the need for animal studies. The organs-on-chips technology have the potential to be more predictive human relevant models for toxicity and efficacy test, and to provide insight into mechanisms of action at the tissue and organ levels. The example microsystems described above offer an alternative approach by creating human-relevant disease models for efficacy testing. Such models could have an impact on various stages of the drug development process, including identification and prioritization of lead compounds, as well as target validation; and may provide a special point of view to tissue engineering research.
Collections of different organ chips integrated via microfluidic linkages could provide a novel way to model physiological interplay between different organs. Developing a complex super system consists of various systems representing different tissue types or organs, which operate as an artificial human body, can be a great challenge and a fantastic idea. To achieve this prospect, developing more effective models mimicking living tissue type or organ is the cornerstone on which much research attention need to be paid.
