Biosensor lights up organ-on-a-chip technology

The organ-on-a-chip concept creates small-scale, biological structures that mimic a specific organ function, such as transferring oxygen from the air into the bloodstream via the lungs. The goal is to use these organs-on-a-chip to accelerate high-throughput testing to assess toxicity - or to evaluate the effectiveness - of new drugs.

One obstacle to the use of these structures is the lack of tools designed to retrieve data from the system, but a new biosensor could change that.

“For the most part, the only existing ways of collecting data on what’s happening in an organ-on-a-chip are to conduct a bioassay, histology, or use some other technique that involves destroying the tissue,” said Michael Daniele, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at North Carolina State University and in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at NC State and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

“What we really need are tools that provide a means to collect data in real time without affecting the system’s operation,” said Daniele, corresponding author of a paper on the new biosensor. “That would enable us to collect and analyse data continuously, and offer richer insights into what’s going on. Our new biosensor does exactly that, at least for oxygen levels.”