Lab on a Chip

Organs-on-chips are an emerging alternative to testing drugs, cosmetics and diseases on animals, but manufacturing and retrieving data from them can be costly and time-consuming. Now researchers at Harvard have developed new materials to 3D print the devices, including sensors to easily gather data.

​The organ-on-a-chip concept has been around for a while now, providing researchers with working, lab-based models of hearts, kidneys, and more. Now, researchers have created a new placenta-on-a-chip, a device that could provide insights to help prevent preterm births.

The Hoope ring is worn on the thumb, and can reportedly diagnose diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhoea, chlamydia and trichomoniasis in less than a minute. It could also be adapted to detect other conditions.

The latest advance in the area of smartphone diagnostics comes in the form of a fiber optic sensor that when attached to a phone's case, could monitor bodily fluids to test for things such as pregnancy or keeps tabs on diabetes.

A micro-device lined with living human cells able to mimic the function of living organs has been declared the overall winner of the Design Museum's Design of the Year Award for 2015.

A new nanoscale plasmon laser changes color in real time through a process as simple as swapping one liquid dye for another. The scientists responsible for it claim this is the world's first liquid nanoscale laser, with potential uses in medical diagnostics.

Not much is known about how tumor cells travel to different parts of the body, a process known as metastasis. But engineers have created a device that is offers a new perspective, allowing researchers an up-close look at the cells as they spread, potentially unearthing new methods of treatment.

Scientists at Harvard's Wyss Institute have developed a human airway muscle-on-a-chip that accurately mimics the way smooth muscle contracts in the human airway and could help in the search for more effective asthma treatments.

With their ability to guide and analyze tiny quantities of liquid, microfluidic "lab-on-chip" devices have found a variety of uses. Now, building them may be as simple as mixing and matching prefabricated Lego-like modules.

Harvard researchers have started a company called Emulate to further develop and market an Organs-on-Chips platform that mimics the physiology of human organs. The platform can be used to test new pharmaceuticals, speeding up the process, sparing animals and paving the way for personalized medicine.

We've already heard about a biosensor developed in Brazil, for detecting pesticide content in food. Now at CE Week, a Seoul-based company called BioSensor Laboratories has presented Penguin, a home-use sensor that detects the presence of antibiotics in animal products.

LABONFOIL is an automated laboratory under development in that uses lab-on-a-chip technology and smart patches to detect a wide variety of substances and diagnose diseases.