Ten connected miniature organs are best human-on-a-chip yet

A chip with ten miniature organs on it

A home for tiny organs

Felice Frankel

Ten miniature models of various human organs have been connected together to create the closest we’ve come yet to a human-on-a-chip. The system survived for four weeks, and allowed scientists to test the effects of a common painkiller on multiple organs. Such systems could eventually do away with animal testing, says Linda Griffith at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led the work.

Scientists around the world have been developing organs-on-chips. These typically comprise a 3D structure that contains multiple types of cells from a particular organ, and they are kept alive …

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