In Vitro Immune Organs-on-Chip for Drug Development
A drug should pass the preclinical evaluation phase to be FDA approved. This relies (i) on in vitro cell culture platforms and (ii) on in vivo animal models and (iii) on clinical evaluation phase (human subjects). Many drugs fail in clinical trials, leading to an incredibly low 1:10,000 ratio for a drug to be FDA approved and go on the market. As a consequence, each single drug development costs up to 12 years with an average of 1.7 billion USD per clinical applicable drug.
The impact of drug candidates on the human immune system could be responsible of this huge failure gap between preclinical and clinical studies. On the first hand, none of the existing in vitro platforms can emulate the cellular microenvironment complexity as well as a relevant physiological model. On the second hand, animal models are far from being able to predict human immune responses to drugs.
Here comes in the past decade of micro-engineering and biotechnology advances which has recently merged to create the so-called “organs-on-chip” technology. Though in vitro devices, this microfluidic-based technology tend to emulate the physiology of tissues, the complex biochemical microenvironment and the important mechanical constrains of cells.
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https://innovation.cherrybiotech.com/organs-on-a-chip/in-vitro-immune-organs-on-chip-for-drug-development-a-review