Research Themes

The Institute for Biomedical Engineering is driving a new cross disciplinary research initiative in “Organ-on-Chip” technologies that aim to engineer in vitro model systems that replicate the physiology of living tissues and organs. This emerging research field holds considerable promise for societal benefit by developing new tools and technologies to improve our understanding of health and disease.

The Imperial Organ-on-Chip Network of Excellence aims to develop and translate platform technologies for biomedical research and clinical application. The scope of the Network is to unite Imperial expertise in engineering, biology and medicine to drive excellence in organ-on-chip research, translation and commercialization towards societal benefit. The Network defines “organ-on-chip” broadly to include any biological, clinical or engineering approach to control, probe or measure living cells or tissues within an engineered microenvironment.

The network is led by Professor Darryl Overby and supported by Professor Clare Lloyd, Dr Beata Wojciak-Stothard, Professor Joshua Edel, Dr Yuval Elani, Dr Tamas Korcsmaros and Dr Joseph van Batenburg-Sherwood.

Current thematic areas

• Synthetic tissues-on-chip, technologies for manufacturing interlinked networks of artificial cells for pharmacokinetic screens and new functional materials (Dr Yuval Elani).
• Biosensors-on-a-chip, underpinning physical science and engineering for developing of in-line biosensors for DNA (Professor Danny O’Hare), metabolites (Professor Martyn Boutelle) and single biomolecules (Professor Joshua Edel)
• Lung-on-chip, with studies related to asthma (Professor Clare Lloyd), pulmonary hypertension (Dr Beata Wojciak-Stothard) and fibrosis (Dr Richard Hewitt)
• Eye-on-chip, with studies related to glaucoma (Professor Darryl Overby) and diabetic retinopathy (Dr Joseph Sherwood)
• Liver-on-chip, with studies related to drug-induced liver injury (Dr Tamir Rashid)
• Cancer/tumour-on-chip, with studies of circulating tumour cell metastasis (Dr Sam Au) and tumour-stroma cell interactions (Professor Armando del Rio Hernandez) and “biopsy-on-chip” (Professor Darryl Overby)
• Blood/lymphatic-vessel-on-chip, with studies of vascular function (Dr Beata Wojciak-Stothard), cell adhesion (Professor Anna Randi) and lymphatic function (Professor James Moore)
• Skin-on-chip, with studies related to wound healing (Dr Claire Higgins), transdermal drug delivery (Professor Anthony Cass) and cell adhesion (Dr Vania Braga)
• Plant-on-chip, with studies on plant-soil interactions (Dr Claire Stanley) and detection of agricultural pathogens (Dr Firat Güder)