Innovation Technology to Engineer 3D Living Organs as Intelligent Diagnostic Tools

Three-dimensional (3D) in vitro living organs that can mimic organ and tissue structure and function have great impact on developing advanced biological science and technology from basic biology to drug discovery, and will have great impact on the future of science to use human organs and tissues not only as new therapeutic approaches but also as intelligent biological tools for many applications such as early detection of newly formed diseases, next generation of diagnostic tools, and an alternative energy source called “bio-energy” devices. Many 3D technology have been already developed, but most of these technologies require expensive equipment, large sample volumes, long time process and fabrication, and the most disadvantages of them is that they are too far from the nature of human organs. Because of the above problems, research and development on drug discovery, regenerative medicine, biotech and pharmaceutical industries are very costly and takes several years to bring a single drug/product to the marketing. The goal of 3D technology is to merge biomaterials science, nanotechnology, and biological principles to generate 3D in vitro living organs, to be called human on chip to mimic organs/tissues in order to partially reduce the amount of in vitro and in vivo animal testing, clinical trials, and to solve the above problems. In a single word; its goal is to jump from bench to market in a low cost and short time. At the nanoscale, chemistry and materials are used to fabricate novel type of hydrogels that are similar to human organs, infusing the cell with extracellular matrix (ECM) molecules and gradients of signaling molecules to influence cell development and aggregation. At microscales, fabrication technology such as photolithography is used to produce devices in a variety of shapes and sizes. These products will have to mimic natural organ and tissues from view point of physical, chemical, and biological properties to in order to be used as intelligent tools.