The Intestine-Chip is made from a flexible polymer and features tiny channels that can be lined with thousands of living human cells. Source: Emulate, Inc.

Microengineered “Intestine-Chips” are being used to demonstrate that human intestinal lining cells created outside the body will mirror living tissue, another step on the road to developing personalized drug therapies.

The findings of a recent study, just one of many recent headlines related to organ-on-chip technology, have the potential to change how patients are treated for debilitating, inflammatory gastrointestinal diseases with a genetic component, such as Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis and irritable bowel syndrome.

In order to avoid costly, ineffective or even harmful drug treatments, scientists could use an individual’s own stem cells to produce a duplicate intestinal lining on an Intestine-Chip. Multiple drugs could then be tested on it without fear of harming the patient, and a determination could be made as to which drug worked best on that particular patient’s intestine.

"This pairing of biology and engineering allows us to re-create an intestinal lining that matches that of a patient with a specific intestinal disease -- without performing invasive surgery to obtain a tissue sample," said Clive Svendsen, PhD, director of the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute and a co-author of the study. "We can produce an unlimited number of copies of this tissue and use them to evaluate potential therapies. This is an important advance in personalized medicine."

For the study, Cedars-Sinai provided the stem cells, while Boston-based Emulate, Inc., supplied the Intestine-Chip. The chip, which is about the size of an AA battery, is made from a flexible polymer and features tiny channels that can be lined with thousands of living human cells.

"Organ-Chips address major challenges in studying the human intestine and intestinal diseases in the lab," said Geraldine A. Hamilton, PhD, president and chief scientific officer of Emulate and a co-author of the study. "The Intestine-Chip is a 'home-away-from-home' for human cells, and provides them with the right microenvironment and biological cues they need to behave just like they do in the body.”

The study appears in the journal Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology (CMGH).