A human-on-a-chip approach to tackling rare diseases

Abstract

Drug development for rare diseases, classified as diseases with a prevalence of < 200 000 patients, is limited by the high cost of research and low target population. Owing to a lack of representative disease models, research has been challenging for orphan drugs. Human-on-a-chip (HoaC) technology, which models human tissues in interconnected in vitro microfluidic devices, has the potential to lower the cost of preclinical studies and increase the rate of drug approval by introducing human phenotypic models early in the drug discovery process. Advances in HoaC technology can drive a new approach to rare disease research and orphan drug development.