Verpoorte and De Haan publish an invited article in Nature Reviews Methods Primers

An invited review co-authored by Prof. Sabeth Verpoorte and postdoc Pim de Haan (Pharmaceutical Analysis) appeared today in Nature Reviews Methods Primers. Entitled “Guide to the organ-on-a-chip", this paper was written as a collaborative effort by an international team of organ-on-a-chip experts put together by Verpoorte. Pim de Haan is a shared first author of this work. Organs-on-chips are miniature versions of human tissues or organs that are interconnected with hair-fine microfluidic channels to supply them with growth medium and to take samples for analysis. They can be used to unravel and better understand (patho)physiological processes, as well as assess drug efficacy and safety.

The article gives an introduction into the organ-on-a-chip field, including organ-chip design and fabrication, potential uses and limitations, choice of biological model (e.g. cell lines, tissue slices, or induced pluripotent stem cells) and the laboratory infrastructure required to work with these innovative in vitro model systems.

The article is available here.