New "biochip": recreate one with your chip

Imagine if a scientist reshaped one or a part of you on a chip, what effect would it have? At least for doctors, this is a good innovation because it helps doctors identify ways to cure you quickly, and patients don't have to go through the painful “trial and error treatment” process.

Release date: 2014-09-03

Imagine if a scientist reshaped one, or a part of you, on a chip. What would it do? At least for doctors, this is a good innovation because it helps doctors identify rapid cures. Your method, patients do not have to go through the painful "trial and error treatment" process, but also can reduce the burden of the current medical system.

Biochip

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley are now exploring this area. They tried to "cultivate" human organ tissues, such as the heart and lungs, on a small chip. These chips are not our common computer chips, but micro-networks derived from adult skin cells that are incubated on a tiny, tube-like plastic plastic chamber that is then glued to a microscope slide. The purpose of this study was to find a way to understand the survival of human tissue and then to simulate real human organ function. Our current drug testing requires the use of animals or human volunteers. The whole process is very lengthy. If this technology is successful, then there will be cheaper and more efficient methods for clinical treatment.

Not only that, traditional drug research and development is not aimed at individuals, but a uniform standard approach. According to Anurag Mathur, the research institute of the project, these chips help to develop “customized drugs”, especially for the designated patients, to test the drugs they really need.

Last May, Nature Medicine revealed that Harvard University and other researchers are developing a "heart chip" to treat Bass syndrome. These studies are currently in their infancy, but once they are successful, they are not only important for drug research, but more importantly, they can lower drug prices. If biochip technology is successful, the speed and accuracy of new drug development can be increased tenfold, while the cost will be reduced by a factor of ten.

"living semiconductor"

The "biochip" technology actually draws on some of the technologies of the semiconductor industry decades ago, which made transistors and built modern computer modules. As transistors become smaller and faster, computers have changed from the expensive "big behemoths" of the past to today's affordable portable devices. Many scientists believe that biotechnology can have the same opportunities.

Researchers say that once a blueprint for a biochip is designed, such as a human lung or other organ, the cost of making a chip is actually not high. The real difficulty is to ensure that the cells themselves can be properly assembled and function in the human body like real organs.

In the end, scientists believe they can perform multiple tests on different drug experimenters to study the doses of drugs needed for different organ tissues. A combined chip containing heart and lung organ tissue is currently being developed, and if this work is successful and more organ prototypes are developed, a simple model of the human body can ultimately be formed. For scientists, they can more intuitively explore how drugs work in separate organs within the body and how they affect the life system.

Replace animal

Of course, this technology has also caused many experts to question because it is difficult to understand how much the chips can be "simulated" when simulating the structure and function of real organs. In addition, some people think that the simulated biochip organ can not replace the real organ or organ system, and whether it can lead to the decline of drug prices is currently unknown.

However, if the biochip technology matures, it will inevitably bring great opportunities. In addition to speeding up drug development and lowering drug prices, it can replace animals in clinical trials for drug testing. In biomedical research, we have to face a huge knowledge gap. We cannot know the cause of the disease. Many medical research is like a headless fly. Biochip technology can change the status quo, at least, in theory.

Source: Lei Feng Net

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