MedIT. Wyss Institute to receive up to $37 million from DARPA to integrate multiple organ-on-chip systems to mimic the whole human body. Wyss Institute researchers and a multidisciplinary team of collaborators seek to build and link 10 human organs-on-chips to mimic whole body physiology.
The system will incorporate the Institute’s Human Lung-on-a-Chip (top) and Human Gut-on-a-Chip (bottom). (Credit: Wyss Institute) The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University announced $37 million funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop an automated instrument that integrates 10 human organs-on-chips to study complex human physiology outside the body.
This effort builds on the Institute’s past breakthroughs in which Institute researchers engineered microchips that recapitulate the microarchitecture and functions of living organs, such as the lung, heart, and intestine. Each individual organ-on-chip is composed of a clear flexible polymer — about the size of a computer memory stick — that contains hollow microfluidic channels lined by living human cells. DARPA and NIH to fund ‘human body on a chip’ research. (Credit: DARPA) Researchers in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT plan to develop a technology platform that will mimic human physiological systems in the laboratory, using an array of integrated, interchangeable engineered human tissue constructs, with $32 million funding over the next five years from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
A cooperative agreement between MIT and DARPA worth up to $26.3 million will be used to establish a new program titled “Barrier-Immune-Organ: MIcrophysiology, Microenvironment Engineered TIssue Construct Systems” (BIO-MIMETICS) at MIT, in collaboration with researchers at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, MatTek Corp. and Zyoxel Ltd. The goal of the program is to create a versatile platform capable of accurately predicting drug and vaccine efficacy, toxicity, and pharmacokinetics in preclinical testing. A Retinal Prosthesis Turned On By Light. The use of light to control neurons could enable significantly more powerful brain-machine interfaces.
First, it allows biomedical engineers to activate chosen sets of neurons, not simply whatever cells happen to be near the stimulation site, as with electrodes. Light can also be used to inhibit a neuron’s firing, whereas electrodes can only stimulate. Most intriguingly of all, the engineering of light-triggered brain cells could begin to pave the way to a hybrid computer that uses an optical link to unite biological and silicon components. But first, we’d need a light-emitting technology well suited to our neurons. One major engineering challenge is that the light source must emit 1-milliwatt-per-square-millimeter pulses to induce brain cells to fire, according to Degenaar and his colleagues at Imperial College, in London. The researchers' LED chip spells out the word 'optical.' Each emitter in the 16-by-16 micro-LED array had its own current source, allowing for individual control.
Rat Brain Robot Grows Up. Kevin Warwick is most certainly the preeminent cyborg of our time.
More than a decade ago he implanted an RFID chip in himself to control simple functions like turning on the lights, and it's been 8 years since he inserted a more elaborate, 100-electrode array into the nerves in his forearm that allowed him to manipulate a robotic arm on another continent. He's assisted students at the University of Reading, in England, who wished to implant magnets in the tips of their fingers and at least one who wished for an electrode in the tongue (with the help, Warwick says, of a Manchester tattoo artist who goes by the name "Dr. Evil"). More recently, he's been growing rat neurons on a 128-electrode array and using them to control a simple robot consisting of two wheels with a sonar sensor. The rudimentary little toy has no microprocessor of its own -- it depends entirely on a rat embryo's brain cells. Read also: Cyborg Fly Pilots Robot.