A month ago, China officially released its first national standard for organs-on-chips, "General Technical Requirements for Skin Chips." Also, a month ago, Donald E. Ingber, the inventor of organs-on-chips and director of Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, visited China to demonstrate these "organs" grown on chips to an audience primarily composed of young people.

Organs-on-chips have been around for over a decade and were named one of the top ten emerging technologies by the World Economic Forum in 2016. What exactly are they, and how do they operate? What recent technological breakthroughs have there been? To address these questions, a reporter from the Yangcheng Evening News recently interviewed Ingber, often referred to as the "Father of Organs-on-Chips."

Ingber discussed a significant challenge faced by the international biopharmaceutical community: the obsolescence of traditional drug development models. Global pharmaceutical companies invest tens of billions of dollars annually in new drug research and development, but over 70% of these new drugs fail during clinical trials, with failure rates exceeding 95% in areas such as brain diseases.

Is there a better way to make research faster, cheaper, and more precise?

More than a decade ago, Ingber envisioned a day when it would be possible to construct a full-system organs-on-chips. After years of research, he and his team have developed eight different types of organs-on-chips, including liver, intestine, kidney, and bone marrow, which can be functionally connected through a liquid and maintained active for up to a month. A simplified version—a human chip system connecting three organs-on-chips—has emerged.

As a disruptive cutting-edge technology, how can organs-on-chips reduce drug development costs and improve efficiency?

Ingber cited the liver chip as an example, stating that research shows its accuracy in predicting drug-induced liver injury responses is 7-8 times higher than animal experiments. Economically, liver chips could save the pharmaceutical industry two to three billion dollars annually by avoiding significant losses due to drug-induced liver damage discovered late in clinical trials.

The benefits of organs-on-chips extend beyond economics to ethics.

Ingber noted that a biotechnology company has internally used these chips to replace non-human primate experiments. This move not only reverses the high costs but also circumvents long-standing ethical controversies. The company's experiments revealed that testing the same number of drugs used to take five years and 5.2 million dollars with non-human primate experiments; now, with liver chips, it takes only 18 months and costs less than one-tenth of the original amount.

Over a year ago, Huawei Cloud launched the world's first large-scale organs-on-chips medical model. According to official information, this large model, combined with organs-on-chips wet experiments, can assist in the entire drug R&D process.

Domestically, companies laying out organs-on-chips industry chains are mostly located in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the Yangtze River Delta. Products such as skin chips, liver chips, lung chips, kidney chips, and human chips have emerged. Globally, there are now over 60 companies commercially producing organs-on-chips.

Source: Lingnan On the Cloud

新知丨人体器官芯片提高药物研发效率

一个月前，我国首个器官芯片领域的国家标准《皮肤芯片通用技术要求》正式出台。也是在一个月前，人体器官芯片发明者、哈佛大学生物启发工程怀斯研究所所长唐纳德·英格伯（Donald E. Ingber）来到中国，现场向以青少年为主的观众展示了上述长在芯片上的“器官”。

人体器官芯片问世已十余年，2016年就被世界经济论坛评为十大新兴技术之一。它究竟是什么，如何运行？近年来技术有何突破发展？就这些问题，羊城晚报记者日前采访了“人体器官芯片之父”英格伯。

英格伯谈道，国际生物医药界面临的一大难题是传统药物开发模式的失效。全球制药公司每年在新药研发上的投入达千亿美元级别，但这些新研药物进入人体临床试验阶段后，逾七成以失败告终，在诸如脑部疾病等领域，失败率甚至高达95%以上。

有没有更好的方法，让研发变得更快、更省钱、更精准？

十多年前，英格伯曾预想有一天能够构建出全系统人体器官芯片。历经多年攻关，他和团队已研发出肝脏、肠道、肾脏和骨髓等8种不同的器官芯片，通过液体连接的方式实现其功能联通，并可维持一个月的活性。一个更简化的版本——连接3个器官芯片的人体芯片系统应运而生。

作为具有颠覆性意义的前沿技术，人体器官芯片能够如何降低药物研发成本、提高研发效率？

英格伯以肝脏芯片举例道，研究结果显示，在预测药物诱导的肝损伤反应方面，肝脏芯片的准确性比动物实验高出7-8倍；在经济效益上，肝脏芯片每年可为制药行业节省20亿-30亿美元投入，避免在临床试验晚期因发现药物诱导肝损伤而造成的巨大损失。

人体器官芯片之裨益，不仅在于经济上，还在于伦理上。

英格伯表示，一家生物技术公司已在内部使用这些芯片来替代非人灵长类动物实验。此举在扭转高昂成本的同时，也规避了长期存在的伦理争议。这家公司通过实验发现，测试相同数量的药物，过去使用非人灵长类动物实验，需要五年时间和520万美元；而现在使用肝脏芯片，只需18个月时间，成本不到原来的1/10。

而在一年多前，全球首个人体器官芯片医药大模型由华为云推出。据官方资料介绍，该大模型结合器官芯片湿实验，可助力药物研发全流程。

放眼国内，布局器官芯片产业链的公司多在粤港澳大湾区和长三角。皮肤芯片、肝芯片、肺芯片、肾芯片以及人体芯片等产品已纷纷涌现。而在全球，目前商业化生产器官芯片的公司已有60多家。

文、图丨记者 王丹阳
翻译丨赵凡
英文审校丨邹晓华