Body on a Chip: Exclusive Conversation w/ Visionary Scientist Anthony Atala
The vast majority of new medications in development fail. The few that ultimately get approved for human use may have unpredictable effects, or the outcome may not be known for months, as with cancer, when it may be too late to try new medicines if the disease progresses. Imagine the potential value of mini replicas of human organs that react to drugs more or less as they might naturally—a “body on a chip.” With the ability to test a drug’s effects on miniature human organs, or even a patient’s own “tumor on a chip,” there is a better chance to determine if a medication works, even before the treatment is delivered. Join us in exploring a new innovation that could revolutionize the way we think of drug discovery and personalized medicine.
Anthony Atala is Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. His work focuses on growing human organs. Fifteen technologies from his laboratory have been used clinically. His work was listed twice as Time Magazine’s top 10 medical breakthroughs of the year. He was named by Scientific American as one of the world’s most influential people in biotechnology, by Nature Biotechnology as one of the top 10 translational researchers in the world, and he is a recipient of the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award.
