Environmental News Network - Penn Engineering’s Blinking Eye-on-a-Chip Used for Disease Modeling and Drug Testing

Details: By University of Pennsylvania; 05.Aug

People who spend eight or more hours a day staring at a computer screen may notice their eyes becoming tired or dry, and, if those conditions are severe enough, they may eventually develop dry eye disease (DED).

Mohammad Munshed

People who spend eight or more hours a day staring at a computer screen may notice their eyes becoming tired or dry, and, if those conditions are severe enough, they may eventually develop dry eye disease (DED). DED is a common disease with shockingly few FDA-approved drug options, partially because of the difficulties of modeling the complex pathophysiology in human eyes. Enter the blinking eye-on-a-chip: an artificial human eye replica constructed in the laboratory of Penn Engineering researchers.

This eye-on-a-chip, complete with a blinking eyelid, is helping scientists and drug developers to improve their understanding and treatment of DED, among other potential uses. The research, published in Nature Medicine, outlines the accuracy of the eye-on-a-chip as an organ stand-in and demonstrates its utility as a drug testing platform.

The study was led by Dan Huh, associate professor in the Department of Bioengineering, and graduate student Jeongyun Seo.

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Penn Engineering’s Blinking Eye-on-a-Chip Used for Disease Modeling and Drug Testing