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Organ-on-chip (OoC) systems are in vitro microfluidic models that mimic the microstructures, functions and physiochemical environments of whole living organs more accurately than two-dimensional models. While still in their infancy, OoCs are expected to bring ground-breaking benefits to a myriad of applications, enabling more human-relevant candidate drug efficacy and toxicity studies, and providing greater insights into mechanisms of human disease. Here, we explore a selection of applications of OoC systems. The future directions and scope of implementing OoCs across the drug discovery process are also discussed.

As an emerging hot topic of the last decade, Organ on Chip (OoC) is a new technology that is attracting interest from both basic and translational scientists. The Biochemical Society, with its mission of supporting the advancement of science, with addressing grand challenges that have societal impact, has included OoC into their agenda to review the current state of the art, bottlenecks and future directions. This conference brought together representatives of the main stakeholders in the OoC field including academics, end-users, regulators and technology developers to discuss and identify requirements for this new technology to deliver on par with the expectations and the key challenges and gaps that still need to be addressed to achieve robust human-relevant tools, able to positively impact decision making in the pharmaceutical industry and reduce overreliance on poorly predictive animal models.

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