For many years, physicians have been working on treatment options for drug addiction, but with moderate success. One of the important reasons for this is that potential drugs are tested on animals during preclinical development to determine their efficacy and safety in humans.

In a project initiated in a special initiative "Helping to End End Addiction Long-term SM" of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), scientists led by James Hickman, Ph.D., Chief Scientist at Hesperos and Professor at the University of Central Florida, are now working with a microfluidic system into which human cells of the liver, skeletal muscle, heart, nerve, and kidney have been integrated. The microfluidic chip was developed in collaboration with one of the pioneers of such systems, Prof. Michael Shuler, Ph.D., from Cornell University.

The aim is to model opioid overdose in humans on the one hand. On the other hand, the effects of repeated overdoses and medical treatments on the organs will be investigated. This is not yet sufficiently known. Drugs that fail often do so because they damage one of these organs.

The research team also developed a method for cultivating a specific type of nerve cells, neurons from the so-called pre-Bӧtzinger complex. These are special neurons that regulate breathing. When opioids have overdosed, their function is impaired or fails completely.

After the establishment of the human-on-a-chip, four widely used opioids will be tested: codeine, morphine, methadone, and fentanyl. Hereafter, the researchers will determine the dose of naloxone required to restore the normal functioning of the pre-Bӧtzinger neurons. At the same time, the researchers will observe what happens to other cell types and thus to the human organs.

The scientists are convinced that their model is suitable for reducing the number of animal experiments.

Source:
https://heal.nih.gov/news/stories/Human-on-a-Chip