we are all unique we are individuals but
do you actually know what defines an
individual what’s the definition if we
google it we end up usually on Wikipedia
and here it’s defined and it visual is
defined as a blank slate shaped by
experience and education so to sum up
actually we are defined by our
environment our environment defines us
as an individual now away is your
question what do we do if we have pain
feel sick or suffer from specific
disease you’re right we take a drug to
relieve us from the pain to cure the
disease and to feel much better but we
actually know that currently the
pharmaceutical industry is facing a huge
crisis in this figure you see the number
of drugs that could be brought to the
market when spending 1 billion US dollar
in 2010 not even a single drug could be
brought to the market with 1 billion US
dollars so it’s a huge problem further
it takes about 10 to 15 years from the
initial screening to the final drug and
nowadays it costs 2 billion US dollars
it’s a lot of money and if you would
spend this money on cars we could buy
for example 11933 Tesla Model X with the
best configuration if you want them to
part these cars you would need 19 soccer
fields as in the store the Swiss so it’s
a lot of cars and actually a lot of
money you need to spend so it’s clear we
need a new technology we need a
technology that reduces the day the
development time increases the
efficiency and also decreases the cost
the drug development process can be
split into three parts first we have the
clinical at the preclinical phases then
we have the clinical phases and we have
the approval and marketing in the
proofing and marketing there is mainly
bureaucracy so we cannot really kick in
with a new technology in the clinical
phase the drug is tested on humans so
it’s also quite hard to exchange the
humans with another technology but what
we can do is actually we can change the
models which are used in the preclinical
phase so the models are actually used to
model the human body and this is exactly
where the new technology kicks in this
technology is called organs on a chip
taking a step back so what kind of
models are nowadays used we have to pay
three dishes the petri dishes are as
actually plastic containers inside these
plastic containers the human cells are
put in in a big soup of cell culture
media and then the drug is tested as you
can imagine this container doesn’t
really model the human body
it’s physiology the other thing would
they can use our animals they can
perform animal experiments there are
needed nowadays but the big problem here
is that if the drug is working in an
animal it’s just working in a human with
a probability of about 50% so actually
you could flip a coin to see whether the
drug will work in the human or not so
now what is the difference from organs
on a chip to the other models the
difference is that we treat the human
cells as an individual and as we learn
for an individual it’s important to have
the right environment so inside these
devices remove the environment and
actually the geometry the architecture
the forces the flow anything which is
important for the specific organ and we
don’t model the full organ we look at
the smallest functional unit so we go
from the organ level to the micro level
and try to model the smallest functional
unit inside these devices if we look at
the human lungs it’s a beautiful example
of a very dynamic organ we all breathe
every day and the breathing motion is
controlled by the diaphragm now this
muscle is contracting and relaxing
leading to an expansion of the human
lung
this expansion and relaxation is
transferred from the organ level to the
lung alveoli and further down to the air
blood barrier so in this organ the
smallest function unit is the air blood
barrier here you see a section of a
human air blood barrier you see the
arrows showing on the blood and
everything which is around is air so the
airflow barrier is this tiny barrier
between the air and the blood and our
team developed now lungs on a chip
and this is how it looks like we
integrated 12 independent lungs on a
single chip
so why it’s called chip because actually
for some part we need technology
fabrication technology which is used in
the computer industry this is why it’s
called on chip although there is nothing
going on with electronics in the center
well we integrated a ultra-thin elastic
membrane we developed for comparison can
you imagine what kind of image disease
it’s actually a micrograph of a human
hair so you see this membranes about 20
times thinner than the human hair and
what we then can do we can take human
cells from the patient and put it on
this membrane here you see in green the
cells which are actually facing the
airside and in red cells which are
facing the blood side and in between you
have this ultra thin membrane so we can
recreate the air blood barrier because
it’s important that we also model the
forces we not only develop lumps on a
chip but actually breathing lungs on a
chip so aside from the ultra thin
membrane where we can culture the human
lung cell zone which is shown here we
integrated the second membrane into our
chip which is shown in blue and if we
pull this membrane down the upper
membrane is pulled down as well so what
we can do is we model the breathing
motion as it is in vivo here you see
when you develop new technologies it’s
always important that you make it as
simple as possible so it’s easy to use
this is exactly what we did we developed
the new technology for existing
biological labs in biological labs
people are used to stand the performance
and to pipette so people which are
actually used to work in the labs they
can also work with our new technology
because it has the same format they’re
used to this format and they also just
need to pipe it everything else is done
by machines which are operated by the by
log biologists but which are very easy
to handle so we can model healthy human
lungs but we can also go a step further
which is in the future in the future we
plan to take also specific diseases and
try to model them inside these longer
inside the lung on chip or inside any
organ ology this allows us to actually
develop diseases on a chip these
diseases can then be used to actually
find new drugs specific for that disease
to help find new targets which will be
going another step into the future we
can look at each one of you each one of
you or more precise your organs are
specific your organs are different from
each other your organs your system is
unique as a fingerprint what we can do
with this technology is to take cells
from you and put it onto our organs on a
chip and create models which best fit
then we can take different drugs screen
them to see which truck best works for
you and this is called personalized
medicine on a chip now a big big step
into the future I have to mention this
because still a long way to go but the
overall goal of this technology is not
to model a signal organ but to model
multiple organs to model these organs
inside the chips if we can create such a
system we can actually have specific
humans where we can test the drugs
before they even go to the clinics so
this means we can actually have
preclinical humans so mature this allows
to test the drug in a safe environment
to find but to find out whether there is
any adverse effect on a specific organ
because sometimes we take a drug and
it’s going to the intestine but maybe
there is a adverse effect on the skin on
your heart on your lung and this we can
model inside such a preclinical view
another thing what we can do is this
system in the future is actually to
check whether a specific drug has any
adverse effects on group of people which
are usually excluded in the clinical
trials these people are very important
to all of us
and we want to know whether the drug is
working or have any adverse effect on
them which is possible with this
technology so I believe with organs on a
chip we can change how drugs will be developed thank you
do you actually know what defines an
individual what’s the definition if we
google it we end up usually on Wikipedia
and here it’s defined and it visual is
defined as a blank slate shaped by
experience and education so to sum up
actually we are defined by our
environment our environment defines us
as an individual now away is your
question what do we do if we have pain
feel sick or suffer from specific
disease you’re right we take a drug to
relieve us from the pain to cure the
disease and to feel much better but we
actually know that currently the
pharmaceutical industry is facing a huge
crisis in this figure you see the number
of drugs that could be brought to the
market when spending 1 billion US dollar
in 2010 not even a single drug could be
brought to the market with 1 billion US
dollars so it’s a huge problem further
it takes about 10 to 15 years from the
initial screening to the final drug and
nowadays it costs 2 billion US dollars
it’s a lot of money and if you would
spend this money on cars we could buy
for example 11933 Tesla Model X with the
best configuration if you want them to
part these cars you would need 19 soccer
fields as in the store the Swiss so it’s
a lot of cars and actually a lot of
money you need to spend so it’s clear we
need a new technology we need a
technology that reduces the day the
development time increases the
efficiency and also decreases the cost
the drug development process can be
split into three parts first we have the
clinical at the preclinical phases then
we have the clinical phases and we have
the approval and marketing in the
proofing and marketing there is mainly
bureaucracy so we cannot really kick in
with a new technology in the clinical
phase the drug is tested on humans so
it’s also quite hard to exchange the
humans with another technology but what
we can do is actually we can change the
models which are used in the preclinical
phase so the models are actually used to
model the human body and this is exactly
where the new technology kicks in this
technology is called organs on a chip
taking a step back so what kind of
models are nowadays used we have to pay
three dishes the petri dishes are as
actually plastic containers inside these
plastic containers the human cells are
put in in a big soup of cell culture
media and then the drug is tested as you
can imagine this container doesn’t
really model the human body
it’s physiology the other thing would
they can use our animals they can
perform animal experiments there are
needed nowadays but the big problem here
is that if the drug is working in an
animal it’s just working in a human with
a probability of about 50% so actually
you could flip a coin to see whether the
drug will work in the human or not so
now what is the difference from organs
on a chip to the other models the
difference is that we treat the human
cells as an individual and as we learn
for an individual it’s important to have
the right environment so inside these
devices remove the environment and
actually the geometry the architecture
the forces the flow anything which is
important for the specific organ and we
don’t model the full organ we look at
the smallest functional unit so we go
from the organ level to the micro level
and try to model the smallest functional
unit inside these devices if we look at
the human lungs it’s a beautiful example
of a very dynamic organ we all breathe
every day and the breathing motion is
controlled by the diaphragm now this
muscle is contracting and relaxing
leading to an expansion of the human
lung
this expansion and relaxation is
transferred from the organ level to the
lung alveoli and further down to the air
blood barrier so in this organ the
smallest function unit is the air blood
barrier here you see a section of a
human air blood barrier you see the
arrows showing on the blood and
everything which is around is air so the
airflow barrier is this tiny barrier
between the air and the blood and our
team developed now lungs on a chip
and this is how it looks like we
integrated 12 independent lungs on a
single chip
so why it’s called chip because actually
for some part we need technology
fabrication technology which is used in
the computer industry this is why it’s
called on chip although there is nothing
going on with electronics in the center
well we integrated a ultra-thin elastic
membrane we developed for comparison can
you imagine what kind of image disease
it’s actually a micrograph of a human
hair so you see this membranes about 20
times thinner than the human hair and
what we then can do we can take human
cells from the patient and put it on
this membrane here you see in green the
cells which are actually facing the
airside and in red cells which are
facing the blood side and in between you
have this ultra thin membrane so we can
recreate the air blood barrier because
it’s important that we also model the
forces we not only develop lumps on a
chip but actually breathing lungs on a
chip so aside from the ultra thin
membrane where we can culture the human
lung cell zone which is shown here we
integrated the second membrane into our
chip which is shown in blue and if we
pull this membrane down the upper
membrane is pulled down as well so what
we can do is we model the breathing
motion as it is in vivo here you see
when you develop new technologies it’s
always important that you make it as
simple as possible so it’s easy to use
this is exactly what we did we developed
the new technology for existing
biological labs in biological labs
people are used to stand the performance
and to pipette so people which are
actually used to work in the labs they
can also work with our new technology
because it has the same format they’re
used to this format and they also just
need to pipe it everything else is done
by machines which are operated by the by
log biologists but which are very easy
to handle so we can model healthy human
lungs but we can also go a step further
which is in the future in the future we
plan to take also specific diseases and
try to model them inside these longer
inside the lung on chip or inside any
organ ology this allows us to actually
develop diseases on a chip these
diseases can then be used to actually
find new drugs specific for that disease
to help find new targets which will be
going another step into the future we
can look at each one of you each one of
you or more precise your organs are
specific your organs are different from
each other your organs your system is
unique as a fingerprint what we can do
with this technology is to take cells
from you and put it onto our organs on a
chip and create models which best fit
then we can take different drugs screen
them to see which truck best works for
you and this is called personalized
medicine on a chip now a big big step
into the future I have to mention this
because still a long way to go but the
overall goal of this technology is not
to model a signal organ but to model
multiple organs to model these organs
inside the chips if we can create such a
system we can actually have specific
humans where we can test the drugs
before they even go to the clinics so
this means we can actually have
preclinical humans so mature this allows
to test the drug in a safe environment
to find but to find out whether there is
any adverse effect on a specific organ
because sometimes we take a drug and
it’s going to the intestine but maybe
there is a adverse effect on the skin on
your heart on your lung and this we can
model inside such a preclinical view
another thing what we can do is this
system in the future is actually to
check whether a specific drug has any
adverse effects on group of people which
are usually excluded in the clinical
trials these people are very important
to all of us
and we want to know whether the drug is
working or have any adverse effect on
them which is possible with this
technology so I believe with organs on a
chip we can change how drugs will be developed thank you
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