Organs-on-Chips: From Platform Technology to Applications in Drug Development BNN October 5, 2023

Organs-on-Chips: From Platform Technology to Applications in Drug Development

Organs-on-Chips: From Platform Technology to Applications in Drug Development

Ort: TU Graz –  Neue Technik – Biochemie Gebäude – Petersgasse 10-12 – Hörsaal BCEG136 (HS E3.1) – Erdgeschoß

Datum: 19. Oktober

Uhrzeit: 17.00 h

Organs-on-chips are advanced tissue culture models that can mimic organ-level functionality in a controlled, dynamic microsystem. They differ from other cell culture models in that they use microenvironment engineering to capture increasingly complex physiological functions. In the past years it has been shown that organs-on-chips can provide accurate and relevant data for preclinical studies, thereby potentially reducing the time and cost of drug development and clinical trials. Moreover, with their unique combination of person-specific human cells and high-level tissue function, organs-on-chips challenge the strong reliance on animal models in life sciences.

In this talk, Prof. Van der Meer of the University of Twente will provide examples of how organs-on-chips can be used to study drugs, taken from his group’s work on vessels-on-chips, heart-on-chip and retina-on-chip. Moreover, he will address the central challenge in the field: how can we upscale, standardize and miniaturize organ-on-chip models in the near future?

 Biography:

Prof. Dr. Andries van der Meer is an Adjunct Full Professor and Group Leader at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. Van der Meer is the president of the European Organ-on-Chip Society (EUROoCS). He is also chair of the Focus Group on Standardization for Organ-on-Chip of the European standardization body CEN CENELEC.

Before joining the University of Twente in 2015, Dr. Van der Meer worked as a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. He has a PhD (University of Twente, 2010), and a MSc in Biology (University of Groningen, 2005).

The presentation “Achievements & future plans on our platform Advanced Microfluidics Initiative (AMI)” was given by General Coordinator of AMI Clemens Wolf from BNN on  27 Sept 2022.