Researchers design placenta-on-a-chip to better understand pregnancy

National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers and their colleagues have developed a “placenta-on-a-chip” to study the inner workings of the human placenta and its role in pregnancy. The device was designed to imitate, on a micro-level, the structure and function of the placenta and model the transfer of nutrients from mother to fetus. This prototype is one of the latest in a series of organ-on-a-chip technologies developed to accelerate biomedical advances.

3D model of the human liver soon created

Toronto: A research team led by U of T Engineering Professor Craig Simmons (MIE, IBBME) received $300,000 this week to create a 3D model of the human liver. Funded by Ontario Centres of Excellence and pharmaceutical consortium CQDM, the project could help determine whether or not new drug molecules are safe for use in humans. Drug developers rely on lab tests and preclinical trials to determine how a potential drug molecule might react when processed by the liver or other organs in the human body. One form of testing is to try the drug on lab-grown cells, but an individual cell can behave very differently to one in its natural environment that is surrounded by blood vessels and other components of tissue.

New "4-D" lung cancer model could quicken discoveries

Houston: Without good models to study cancer metastasis -- the spread of cancer cells from one organ to another -- cancer researchers have struggled to understand tumor progression fully, and new therapies targeting the main causes of death are slow to come. Researchers at Houston Methodist have invented a new, ex vivo lung cancer model that mimics the process of tumor progression. Tests of the model are published this month in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery (now online). "Our model truly captures the phenomenon of cancer metastasis," said Houston Methodist thoracic surgeon and scientist, Min P. Kim, M.D., the report's principal investigator. The model can be used to study the progression of other cancers besides lung.