Organs-On-Chips: Tech Progress & Regulatory Tailwinds

The panel discussed the progress being made in microphysiological systems (MPS) and the future of organ-on-chip research models.

Speakers:

Donald Ingber — Founding Director of the Wyss (“VEESE”) Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, scientific founder and board member of the event's sponsor, Emulate. He has co-founded multiple companies and, prior to 2010, pioneered the reconstitution of organ-level lung function on a chip.

Linda Griffith — Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT and Director of MIT’s Center for Gynepathology Research, which she co-launched in 2009 to advance both basic and clinical research in endometriosis, infertility, and other diseases of the female reproductive system.

Christine Happel — Program Officer at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the NIH, where she supports efforts to transition organ-chip science from early innovation to validation and real-world impact.

Zohreh Izadifar — Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. As a postdoctoral fellow in Don Ingber’s lab at the Wyss Institute, she led development of the first physiologically relevant human cervix-on-a-chip.

MPS are proving to be increasingly valuable for early drug discovery. By recreating human‑specific physiology—fluid flow, barrier function, multicellular interactions, and organ‑level mechanics—organ‑on‑chip models generate insight that’s difficult to obtain from traditional cell lines or animals. They support target validation research and they enable early efficacy modeling for processes like neuroinflammation, fibrosis, barrier breakdown, infection, and metabolic dysfunction. Liver, kidney, lung, gut, cervix, and BBB chips can also provide early tox, PK/PD, and ADME readouts; measuring metabolism, clearance, permeability, and drug–drug interactions. Beyond these core areas, chips offer windows into disease modeling, including patient‑specific biology using iPSC‑derived cells, and help de‑risk newer modalities that need human‑relevant microenvironments to behave predictably. Together, these capabilities make MPS one of the most important emerging tools for building human biology into discovery from the start, not just for avoiding late‑stage toxicology failures.