In a technology breakthrough, researchers from India recently created a placenta on chip, opening the way for researchers to conduct new research into pregnancy and complications that may arrise. What exactly did the researchers do and why could organ on chip technologies become big business in the future?
Indian Researchers Create Placenta on Chip
Recently, researchers from the ICMR-National Institute for Research on Reproductive and Child Health (Mumbai) and IIT Bombay jointly developed an indigenous placenta-on-chip platform that replicates key functions of the human placental barrier.
The chip, which has been designed to mimic the placenta, is able to reproduce essential placental functions including hormone production, nutrient transport, waste removal, and selective barrier activity. The ability to recreate these functions allows scientists to better understand the role that the placenta plays during pregnancy, and how complications can arise.
For example, the researchers demonstrated biological behaviours such as glucose transport, urea waste exchange, and responses to hyperglycaemic conditions that mimic gestational diabetes.
This new device also presents researchers with the opportunity to not only study pregnancy in greater depth, but also investigate how drugs cross the placental barrier. With this capability, researchers will be able to gain a better understanding of how medicines and chemicals may affect fetal development, while also identifying potential risks to maternal health.
But the development of this new chip is about more than its ability to replicate the placenta. Unlike many existing organ-on-chip platforms that rely on complex microfluidics and continuous perfusion systems, the new design is considerably simpler. This makes the device more practical for standard laboratories while still reproducing key placental functions. The researchers demonstrated this capability by successfully modelling gestational diabetes and observing measurable changes in placental transport behaviour.
According to the researchers, the platform was developed through a combination of expertise in reproductive biology, microengineering, and cell biology, demonstrating the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration between engineers and biomedical scientists.
Such devices present researchers with exciting opportunities to reduce reliance on animal testing while providing more physiologically relevant models for studying pregnancy complications such as pre-eclampsia and fetal growth restriction. While the technology still requires further optimisation before any clinical translation, it represents another important milestone for organ-on-chip research.
Why Organ on Chip Technologies Will Become Big Business in the Future
What the researchers have created is certainly a feat of technology, but it is hardly the first organ on chip. For years, researchers have been developing organ-on-chip technologies to better understand how organs function, identify new drugs, and investigate diseases in ways that are often more representative of human biology than traditional laboratory models.
But where this technology could really become massive is in the field of personalised medicine. One of the biggest problems with diseases such as cancer is that they are often highly patient specific. Since cancer develops from a patient's own cells, the immune system often struggles to recognise it as a threat, while developing drugs that target cancer cells without damaging healthy tissue remains one of the biggest challenges in modern medicine.
If organ-on-chip technologies continue to advance, it may eventually become possible to grow miniature organ models using a patient's own cells. Researchers could then test hundreds, or even thousands, of potential treatments against that patient's tissue before deciding which therapy offers the greatest chance of success. Instead of relying solely on clinical trial data, treatments could be tailored to the biology of each individual patient.
But what makes the technology even more exciting is that it could help advance regenerative medicine. Although these chips do not themselves grow replacement organs, many of the same technologies involved in understanding cell behaviour could eventually contribute to growing functional tissues or organs from a patient's own cells. If that becomes possible, it could dramatically reduce organ rejection while helping address the global shortage of donor organs.
Overall, what the researchers have developed is genuinely exciting. Organ-on-chip technology is already transforming biomedical research, and as personalised medicine and regenerative therapies continue to mature, it could become one of the most valuable technologies in modern healthcare. Considering the enormous costs associated with drug development and long-term medical treatment, it is easy to see why this field is attracting so much investment.
