In England, the Design Museum in London has awarded its overall top prize for 2015 to a team of scientists and engineers who are trying to revolutionise the way that new pharmaceutical medicines and treatments are developed and tested.

The project team leaders, Donald Ingber and Dan Dongeun Huh of Harvard University’s Wyss Institute, began work on this revolutionary technology around seven years ago, as it was clear to them that the current system for developing new treatments, which relies heavily on the use of animals, has major failings.

The new technology borrows from processes used in the computer chip industry, and consists of see-through, fingernail-sized micro-devices lined with living human cells. Initial investigations have been extremely promising and indicate that this technology will be of significant value and can accurately replicate the structure, function and behaviour of the lung, gut and liver. Although the

new technology is still in development stage, there is significant optimism that these chips can also eventually be linked up to form a ‘body on a chip’ which can be personalised to the cells and tissues of a particular individual.

source: optimistworld.com