Technology

In recent years, great progress has been made in using the self-organizing properties of pluripotent or adult stem cells to generate multicellular structures known as organoids. Thanks to their ability to mimic the microarchitecture and functional characteristics of native organs, organoids have gradually become a promising method for the modeling of development and disease of various human organs.

As organoid technology opens up new frontiers of biomedical research, there is an emerging need for innovative engineering methods for the production and control of organoids and their microenvironment. To address the limitations of conventional techniques, researchers in the field of stem cell and developmental biology are allying with engineers and physical scientists to develop more advanced in vitro technologies for organoid research. At the forefront of this work is the integration of organoids with organ-on-a-chip technology.

Organ-on-a-chip can be broadly defined as miniature cell culture devices designed to simulate functional units of human organs in vitro. By integrating living human cells with synthetic, physiologically relevant microenvironment, the organ-on-a-chip can mimic integrated organ-level functions necessary for physiological homeostasis and complex disease processes. In addition, different organ-chip models can be fluidly linked to construct a body-on-a-chip that can simulate multiple organ interactions and physiological responses at the systemic level.

Organoids and organ-on-a-chip represent two fundamentally different but complementary methods to achieve the goal of recapitulating the complexity of human organs in vitro. Organoids follow intrinsic developmental procedures and develop from self-organizing stem cells to reproduce the key structural and functional characteristics of their counterparts in the body. The similarities of organoids to actual organs make them more attractive for target identification and verification early in drug development. The organ-on-a-chip technology relies on our understanding of human organs to construct man-made structures to precisely control cells and their microenvironment. As an engineering construct with better reproducibility and controllability, organ-on-a-chip is more suitable for efficacy and safety screening. By combining the strength of these two technologies, organoid-on-a-chip can be used as a more versatile and predictive preclinical model for conventional and emerging drug discovery processes.

OrganoLab brings together outstanding scientists, geneticists, surgeons, clinicians, and bioengineers, with the common goal of accelerating the discovery and promoting bench-to-bedside translation of organoid technology. we can now gradually differentiate human pluripotent stem cells to form three-dimensional tissue organoids including intestine, colon, liver, and stomach organoids with complex tissue structures and multiple cell types.