2014年5月28日讯 最近来自哈佛大学怀斯生物工程研究中心的研究人员公布了他们最新研究成果，这一成果有望取代目前在药物研发中广泛使用的动物实验方法。研究人员成功将骨髓细胞植入芯片用于模拟真实组织环境进行药物研究。研究人员希望利用这种芯片来研究放射引起的骨髓细胞坏死。

在一次FDA支持的研究中，研究人员利用这种芯片测试了一种能够保护骨髓细胞免受射线伤害的药物，结果显示芯片上的细胞保持完整。这一结果被发表在五月4日的Nature Methods上。目前哈佛的科学家正在建立肺部、心脏以及肾脏等器官的生物芯片用于测试其在药物研发中的作用。通过这种方法，动物实验可能在未来退出药物研发领域的舞台。

详细英文报道：

Scientists at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have unveiled their newest tool for drug testing, dubbed "bone marrow-on-a-chip," the first device of its kind that mimics the structure, functions and cellular make-up of bone marrow.

Bone marrow is made up of complex tissue and has, up until now, primarily been studied intact in living animals. Like the Wyss Institute's other organs-on-chipstechnology, the newly engineered bone marrow could provide scientists with a more accurate alternative to testing on animals. Wyss scientists hope the device could be used to help develop treatments to reverse cell death in bone marrow caused by radiation.

In an initial test with backing from the FDA, the engineered bone marrow imitated human marrow when it was exposed to radiation. When tested with a drug known to prevent radiation poisoning, the bone marrow-on-a-chip was unharmed. The findings are detailed in the May 4 issue of Nature Methods.

So far, Wyss scientists have built lung, heart, kidney and gut chips that reproduce important aspects of organ function using a technique that combines multiple types of cells from an organ on a microfluidic chip. But Wyss scientists needed to take a different approach to create engineered complex bone marrow that mimicked the real thing.

Investigators packed dried bone powder into an open, ring-shaped frame the size of a coin battery and implanted the mold under the skin on a mouse's back. After 8 weeks, the disk-shaped bone that had formed in the mold was surgically removed and examined with a CT scanner. The CT scan revealed a honeycomb-like structure that looked identical to natural trabecular bone, which holds bone marrow. In addition, the new bone marrow was saturated with red blood cells, resembling marrow from a living mouse.

After surgically removing the engineered bone from the mice, the researchers kept the bone marrow alive outside of the animals by placing it in a microfluidic device designed to steadily supply nutrients and remove waste, similar to what the tissue would experience in the body. The engineered marrow in the chip remained healthy for up to one week--long enough to use the device to test the toxicity and effectiveness of a new drug.