Organ Model: Central Nervous System

With over 150 peer-reviewed publications across 30+ organ models, Emulate Organ-Chips are empowering researchers to make game-changing scientific breakthroughs! Download this digest to easily explore all publications related to your field of research, or to just learn more about how the technology itself is developing.

New this quarter:

Fallopian Tube

• Human fallopian tube-on-a-chip for preclinical testing of non-hormonal contraceptives with living human sperm

Intestine

• Probiotic intervention mitigates radiation-induced intestinal injury by alleviating oxidative stress in a human gut-on-a-chip

Lung (Airway)

• Development of an acute inhalation toxicity testing method based on a lung-on-a-chip

Lung (Alveolus)

• Enhanced lung delivery of an immunostimulatory duplex RNA augments the antitumor activity by reshaping systemic cytokine pharmacodynamics

Lung (Alveolus)

• Alveolus-on-a-Chip: A Novel Tool for Modeling Lung Transplant Cold Storage Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury

Placenta

• Simvastatin Restores Uteroplacental Hemodynamics and Trophoblast Function in Obstetric Antiphospholipid Syndrome in a Placenta-on-a-Chip Model

REVIEW ARTICLES:

Female Reproductive Tract

• Female Reproductive Tract Organ-on-Chips: Modeling Barrier Function and Drug Transport

Drug Development

• Human organ-on-a-chip technology as a catalyst for drug discovery

PUBLISHED FROM PRE-PRINT:

Intestine (Colon)

• Human inflammatory bowel disease-on-a-chip for modelling disease progression, cancer initiation and sex-specific effects

Lymph Node

• In vitro recapitulation of intramuscular mRNA vaccination with naive and recall antigens using a human lymphoid follicle chip platform

Vasculature

• Human coronary artery organ-chip with circulating immune cells recapitulates anti-inflammatory effect of pulsatile wall strain

Application: Drug Discovery

Highlights

This review highlights Organ-Chips as a more human-relevant preclinical platform that recreates key aspects of organ physiology—including tissue-tissue interfaces, dynamic fluid flow, mechanical forces, and immune interactions—to improve prediction of human drug responses. Unlike conventional cell cultures or animal models, Organ-Chips enable therapeutics to be evaluated using clinically relevant dosing routes and pharmacokinetic profiles, supporting more accurate assessment of efficacy, toxicity, and mechanisms of resistance. The authors also emphasize that combining Organ-Chips with high-throughput screening, functional genomics, and artificial intelligence could accelerate target identification and drug discovery while helping reduce the high rate of clinical trial failures. Although challenges remain around standardization and scalability, the review concludes that Organ-Chips are poised to become an increasingly important tool for drug development and regulatory safety assessment.

Synopsis

Organ-on-a-Chip technology is emerging as a powerful New Approach Methodology (NAM) for drug development, driven by the need for more human-relevant and scalable experimental models. As these systems move toward broader adoption, a key challenge remains: generating consistent, interpretable data that supports confident experimental and translational decision-making.

This webinar examines how imaging and AI-driven analysis workflows enable Organ-Chip studies to scale from innovation to routine application. Speakers begin with an overview of Organ-on-a-Chip technology and its role in addressing translational gaps in drug discovery, highlighting how Liver-Chips are being evaluated in collaboration with regulatory agencies for better prediction of drug-induced liver injury.

The session then explores how the newly released AVA™ Emulation System enables scalable Organ-Chip experimentation through an integrated system for incubation, microfluidic delivery, and routine imaging. Paired with AI-driven analysis, brightfield image data can be used to automate quality control by monitoring chip health, morphology, and assay performance over time across large studies.

To complete the workflow, post-study high-resolution imaging is applied to evaluate more complex biological markers, including toxicology-relevant endpoints and drug uptake. These datasets are paired with advanced analysis techniques that translate imaging data into quantitative, biologically meaningful insights.

Attendees will gain a practical understanding of how unified imaging and analysis strategies—spanning routine QC through advanced interrogation—support scalability, reproducibility, and alignment with evolving regulatory expectations for Organ-Chips and other NAM-based drug development.

Organ Model: Brain

Applications: Neuroscience, Immunology & Inflammation

Highlights

This study demonstrates the development of a human iPSC-derived Brain-Chip model of the neurovascular unit to investigate neurovascular dysfunction associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Using cells from an AD donor and a healthy control, the model revealed blood–brain barrier impairment, altered transporter function, and elevated inflammatory signaling under dynamic flow conditions. Notably, the findings point to Aβ-independent neurovascular dysfunction linked to vascular tau accumulation, highlighting mechanisms that are difficult to isolate in traditional models. Overall, the work illustrates the utility of Organ-Chip platforms for studying complex, human-specific aspects of neurodegenerative disease biology.

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Synopsis

Watch this on-demand webinar for a closer look at the Emulate Brain-Chip R1, a first-in-class, isogenic Organ-Chip model designed to advance human-relevant research of the blood–brain barrier (BBB) and neurovascular unit (NVU). Presented by Emulate scientists Erin Greguske, PhD, and Randy Daughters, PhD, this webinar walks viewers through the development, characterization, and applications of this comprehensive five-cell iPSC model. Attendees will learn how the Brain-Chip R1 recreates key NVU interactions, maintains a tight and stable BBB-like barrier, and enables more predictive studies in neuroinflammation, BBB transport, and CNS drug discovery. 

Key Learning Points 

• Overview of the Brain-Chip R1 and how five isogenic iPSC-derived cell types recreate essential features of the human NVU.
• Characterization of barrier function, transporter expression, and glial resting-state behavior across the experimental window.
• How the Chip-R1™ Rigid Chip minimizes drug absorption, improving compound recovery and quantitative BBB permeability measurements.
• Applications in BBB transport, neuroinflammation modeling, and CNS drug development, including examples of functional assays and readouts.

Overview

Learn how our Brain-Chip R1 can be applied to emulate the complex functions and physiology of the human neurovascular unit.

In this technical note, we review how the Brain-Chip R1 provides a reproducible, resting-state NVU model suitable for studies of BBB transport, permeability, and neuroinflammatory mechanisms.

Key highlights:

• Incorporates five iPSC-derived cell types, including proprietary BMECs that exhibit a physiologically relevant brain microvascular endothelial–like phenotype
• Maintains resting-state glia and a tight, stable barrier throughout a four-day experimental window
• Features a streamlined, 12-day direct-to-chip workflow with no pre-plating or expansion steps, enabling robust and reproducible performance
• Built on the Chip-R1™ Rigid Chip, which minimizes drug absorption to support reliable BBB transport studies
  

The Brain-Chip R1 is an isogenic, human-relevant Organ-Chip model designed to recapitulate the cellular diversity and functional interactions of the neurovascular unit (NVU). This model integrates five human iPSC-derived cell types—neurons, astrocytes, microglia, pericytes, and Emulate’s proprietary brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMECs)—within the dynamic, perfused microenvironment of the Chip-R1™ Rigid Chip.

Organ Model: Brain

Applications: Neuroscience

Highlights

This work covers several key components of establishing a functional brain-on-a-chip model to create a controlled environment that simulates the brain’s extracellular matrix and vasculature. These include incorporating various cell types, such as astrocytes, endothelial cells, pericytes, and immune cells, as well as the use of human-induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to derive these cell types, procedures to establish a functional multicultural system to study cell–cell interactions within the neurovascular unit, and methods to evaluate the model’s functionality through imaging techniques and biochemical assays.

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Organ Model: Spinal cord (ALS)

Application: Neurodegeneration

Highlights

In this study, researchers used Organ-Chips—specifically spinal cord chips (SC-chips)—to model young-onset, sporadic ALS by combining patient-derived iPSC motor neurons with brain endothelial-like cells. The microfluidic flow in the SC-chips enhanced motor neuron maturation and health, enabling the emergence of distinct neuronal subpopulations. Analyses revealed ALS-specific disruptions in glutamatergic and synaptic signaling, supporting the model’s relevance for studying disease mechanisms and its potential for future drug screening.

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Organ Model: Brain (Blood-Brain Barrier)

Application: ADME, Cancer

Highlights

• The authors created a human BBB-Chip by culturing iPSC-derived brain microvascular endothelial cells opposite neural cells under microfluidic flow, thereby modeling the key structural and functional features of the human blood–brain barrier.
• They validated the chip’s barrier integrity using fluorescent dextran leakage assays, and confirmed the expression of tight junction markers (such as claudin-5 and occludin) in the endothelial layer.
• By flowing their engineered nanobioparticles (NBPs) through the endothelial channel and collecting effluent from the neuronal side, they demonstrated receptor-mediated transcytosis across the BBB compartment in a way that closely mimics human physiology.
• Through targeted blocking experiments and siRNA knockdown of HER3, they showed that NBP passage across the in vitro BBB depends on HER3 interactions and caveolae-associated pathways, offering mechanistic insights that can guide future brain-targeted drug delivery strategies.

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