Organ Chips in Safety Pharmacology

Assessing a drug’s potentially toxic and therapeutic effects on human health is one of the critical stages of drug discovery. Traditionally utilized two-dimensional (2D) cell culture and animal models for preclinical testing of the drugs, while helpful, provide limited resemblance with human physiology. The last two decades have witnessed the emergence of organ-on-a-chip technology, which aims to recapitulate organ function of the organ(s) and gradually replace current animal models in preclinical testing to bypass associated ethical, economic time, and translational issues. By converging cell biology, engineering, and biomaterial technology, these devices can precisely mimic the structural and functional characteristics of human physiology. Because of this, precise determination of drug response could be obtained before human clinical trials. This contribution discusses a few organ-on-chip models and their applications in evaluating drug safety and pharmacology. We also highlighted the challenges these methods overcame for their clinical translation for the drug screening process and their modifications.