Prof. Ute Schepers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology has researched at Harvard University in Boston and is now developing multi-organ chips at the KIT. She has also stimulated the establishment of the spin-off vasQlab and is active in this new company.

In an interview on the platform tierversuche verstehen, she talks about the current status and perspectives of the multi-organ-on-a-chip systems, which could replace animal experiments in the field of drug development in future. In her opinion, she estimates that industry might be able to do their drug development without animal experiments in 20 years.

Reasons for this time distance are, additionally to currently missing organs, technical and biological hurdles. Today, no one could guarantee a true blood flow, induced pluripotent stem cells would also have to be stimulated to cultivate certain cell types of an organ, which otherwise cannot be bred outside the human body.

The validation process will also take a very long time.

Source:
https://www.tierversuche-verstehen.de/multi-organ-chip-ein-vollstaendiger-ersatz-fuer-tierversuche/

Further information:
http://www.vasqlab.com/