Organ on a chip technology

Organ on a chip technology is revolutionizing live sciences and pharmaceutical sectors with its goal to do more accurate predictions, reduce animal testing, and improve disease modeling and personalized medicine. In this article, Micronit explains the technology behind organ on a chip models and gives insight into the future of organ on a chip systems.

What is organ on a chip?

Organ on a chip (OoC) systems are micro-engineered devices that recreate aspects of human organ function using living human cells. This innovative field merges lab on a chip technology with advanced cell biology to create microfluidic platforms. They come in different formats, including:

• Small microfluidic chips (often microscope-slide sized) for specialized or exploratory studies.
• Standard well plate formats (such as 96-well footprints) compatible with microscopes, incubators, automation systems, and high-throughput screening tools.
• The key features of organ on a chip (OoC) systems include microfluidic channels that mimic blood flow, 3D structures, mechanical forces, and precisely controlled environments. This makes OoC models more life-like and dynamic than traditional cell culture.

The benefits of organ on a chip technology

Organ on a chip is revolutionizing the life sciences and pharmaceutical sectors. OoC systems address several major challenges in research and drug development:

• Accurate human predictions
  Organ on a chip technology has the potential to provide human-relevant data earlier, helping researchers identify ineffective or unsafe drug candidates in the early stages of drug development. Most drug candidates fail along the way, and OoC helps uncover failures earlier and at lower cost.
• Reduced animal testing
  Organ on a chip systems support ethical research and deliver data often more predictive than animal models.
• Accurate disease modeling
  OoC can recapitulate in vitro complex biological processes such as inflammation, barrier dysfunction, and cancer spread.
• Improve personalized medicine
  Organ on a chip systems can use patient-derived cells to study individualized treatment responses.
• Maximalized efficiency
  Organ on a chip technology integrate well with automated and high-throughput workflows.

Organ on a chip technology: From isolated devices to datadriven platforms

Early organ on a chip efforts often centred on crafting ingenious one-off devices – each new chip a minor marvel of micro-engineering. But as the field matures, success is being redefined. The true value of OoC lies not in the elegance of a single device, but in the biological insights and reliable data it can produce. In today’s OoC landscape, the emphasis is shifting from gadgetry to data quality: ensuring that organ-chips yield reproducible, physiologically relevant results that can accelerate research and drug development. This means designing devices with the end-goal in mind, using high-quality cell sources, building in sensors for continuous monitoring, and meeting the compliance standards that give industry and regulators confidence in the data. Rather than custom-building a new chip for every experiment, the emphasis is on creating versatile platforms that can be scaled up for high-throughput studies and adapted to different tissues or disease models as needed. In short, the question driving innovation is no longer “What can this chip do?” but “What knowledge can we gain from it, and how easily?” 

Micronit’s vision aligns with this data-driven paradigm. We are developing an integrated platform approach to organ on a chip technology – essentially providing the “connective tissue” that links multiple organ units, sensors, and fluidic circuits into one coherent system. By focusing on the infrastructure layer of OoC – the materials, interfaces, and standards that allow components to work together – we enable researchers to mix and match different organ models and readouts on the fly. Our goal is to help customers generate better data, faster: to make it simple to connect, scale, and compare results across organ models, and ultimately to translate those results into real-world biomedical insights. 

How to develop organ on a chip models?

To develop an organ on a chip model, Micronit draws on a broad suite of technological strengths. Our platform philosophy is built on tangible innovations in materials and design, honed through years of experience in microfluidics and MEMS fabrication. Here are some of the core capabilities that set our organ on a chip solutions apart: 

• High-performance materials
  We specialize in glass, silicon and polymer microfabrication, harnessing the advantages of each. By selecting and sometimes combining materials cleverly, we craft organ on a chip devices that meet the needs of both cutting-edge research and industrial production.
• Hybrid integration of components
  Creating a truly multifunctional organ on a chip often means bringing together disparate elements – glass slides, polymer structures, silicon chips – into one assembly. Micronit has developed methods to join different materials reliably, using techniques like micropatterned adhesives and plasma- or chemical-assisted bonding to achieve tight seals between, say, a glass microchannel layer and a polymer substrate. This hybrid assembly approach lets us integrate delicate electronic components directly into the chip.
• Sensorisation for real-time readouts
  Organ on a chip systems demand real-time monitoring of the living tissues. Micronit has experience with the incorporation of different embedded sensors to capture data continuously. From electrodes that measure electrical resistance (to gauge barrier integrity of tissue layers) to third party integrated flow meters and chemical sensors, we design our chips to be as informative as possible. These sensors provide immediate feedback on the microenvironment without disturbing the cells.
• Modularity and standards
  Perhaps our most forward-looking effort is the drive toward plug-and-play modularity in organ-on-chip systems. We know that no single chip will suit every experiment. Flexibility is key: the ability to swap in different organ units, add a sensor here or a pump there, and to interconnect multiple chips into a “body-on-a-chip” network when needed.
• Bridging to existing lab tools
  We recognise that adoption of new technology is eased by building bridges to what scientists already know and trust. A great example is the well-known ThinCert® cell-culture insert (a small porous membrane used in standard multi-well plates to culture cells). Rather than replacing such well-established tools, we have prototyped ways to upgrade them into microfluidic systems.

Thanks to the Eurostars Programme, project E! 12572 - MechanoCHIP and the Nationaal Groeifonds project NXTGEN HIGHTECH Biomed03 for for supporting this vision and working with us to create such ecosystem.