The Journal of mHealth Vol 2 Issue 4 (August) | Page 16

Industry News

Human Organs-on-Chips Wins
Design of the Year 2015
even more to translate the Organs-onChips technology into a commerciallyavailable system that can be used to design
better and safer products for humans, as
well as creating a new era of applications
in the personalised health space.”
The Organs-on-Chips technology is
based on pioneering work conducted
by Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D. and his
team at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard
University.

Recognised for its potential to reduce
animal testing, revolutionise the development of new drugs, and open a new era
of personalised health Emulate’s Human
Organs-on-Chips has been named the
overall winner of the ‘Design of the Year’
award by London’s Design Museum.
Organs-on-Chips emulates human biology to understand how diseases, medicines, chemicals, and foods affect human
health. The technology involves placing
living human cells in micro-engineered
environments to create a microchip
embedded with hollow microfluidic tubes
each lined with human cells, through
which air, nutrients, blood and infectioncausing bacteria can be pumped.
The chips are manufactured in a similar
way to microprocessors, only instead of
moving electrons through silicon, these
chips push minute quantities of chemicals past cells from lungs, intestines, livers, kidneys and hearts. The microfluidic
networks let the chips mimic the structure and function of complete organs,
making them an excellent testbed for
pharmaceuticals.
The complete integrated system provides
a window into the inner-workings of the
human body, enabling the prediction of
human response with greater precision
and detail than today’s cell culture

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August 2015

or animal-based testing.
“This winning design is a great example
of how design is a collaborative practice embracing expertise and know
how across disciplines. Its selection as
Design of the Year 2015 also signifies
a desire to recognise and award design
that can significantly impact society
now and in the future,” said Gemma
Curtin, who is the Designs of the Year
2015 exhibition curator.
“This is the epitome of design innovation – elegantly beautiful form, arresting
concept and pioneering application”
The award is selected by design experts,
practitioners, curators and academics
from around the world, who were united
in their responsibility to select a winner that emphasises design’s impact on
our lives now and in the future, solving
diverse problems with innovation and
intelligence.
“We are deeply honoured that our
Organs-on-Chips have been awarded
Design of the Year, and we are passionately following our mission to apply our
new living products for a range of applications to improve human health,” said
Geraldine A. Hamilton, Ph.D., President
and Chief Scientific Officer of Emulate.
“This prestigious recognition inspires us

Each Organ-on-Chip can contain tens
of thousands of cells in tiny, hollow
channels and is approximately the size
of a USB memory stick. The Organson-Chips are designed to recreate human
biology, emulating dynamics of organs
at the cellular level with unprecedented
precision, reproducibility and control.
Emulate’s team has designed a range of
Organs-on-Chips, including the lung,
gut, kidney, skin, eye, and blood-brainbarrier, which can be linked together into
a ‘Human-On-Chips’ system. The products are now being used commercially to
improve innovation, design and safety
for industrial applications in the areas of
pharmaceuticals, personalised medicine,
agriculture, cosmetics and chemicalbased consumer products.
This year is the first time the prestigious
Design of the Year award has been presented to a product from the field of
medicine, and there was strong competition from various industries, including Google’s self-driving car and several
other notable designs. Human Organson-Chips received their nomination
from Paola Antonelli, the Museum of
Modern Art’s Senior Curator of Architecture & Design and Director of R&D.
“This is the epitome of design innovation – elegantly beautiful form, arresting concept and pioneering application,”
said Antonelli.
Organs-on-Chips are featur VBBF