Looking to the future of organs-on-chips: interview with Professor John Wikswo.

John P Wikswo

doi:10.4155/fsoa-2016-0085

Abstract

John Wikswo talks to Francesca Lake, Managing Editor: John is the founding Director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education (VIIBRE). He is also the Gordon A Cain University Professor; a B learned Professor of Living State Physics; and a Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, and Physics. John earned his PhD in physics at Stanford University (CA, USA). After serving as a Research Fellow in Cardiology at Stanford, he joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Vanderbilt University (TN, USA), where he went on to make the first measurement of the magnetic field of an isolated nerve. He founded VIIBRE at Vanderbilt in 2001 in order to foster and enhance interdisciplinary research in the biophysical sciences, bioengineering and medicine. VIIBRE efforts have led to the development of devices integral to organ-on-chip research. He is focusing on the neurovascular unit-on-a-chip, heart-on-a-chip, a missing organ microformulator, and microfluidic pumps and valves to control and analyze organs-on-chips.

Highlights

QQ Can you tell us a little about your ects Agency (DARPA), the NIH’s National background & what led you into the Center for Advancing Translational Sciences organ-on-a-chip field?
At Vanderbilt I had a very strong research Reduction Agency (DTRA), I realized we program that ranged from neuromagnetic had technology that was ideally suited to measurements and cardiac biophysics to non- control OOAC perfusion and media recirdestructive testing and the study of corrosion culation and record the metabolic activity of in aging aircraft
In work on a variety of we have the greatest experience with is the projects, we succeeded in refining the pumps neurovascular unit, which recapitulates the and valves, and when the national organ-on- blood–brain barrier (BBB) using human a-chip (OOAC) programs were announced neurons, astrocytes, pericytes and microby the Defense Advanced Research Proj- vascular endothelial cells

Summary

Introduction

QQ Can you tell us a little about your ects Agency (DARPA), the NIH’s National background & what led you into the Center for Advancing Translational Sciences organ-on-a-chip field?. In work on a variety of we have the greatest experience with is the projects, we succeeded in refining the pumps neurovascular unit, which recapitulates the and valves, and when the national organ-on- blood–brain barrier (BBB) using human a-chip (OOAC) programs were announced neurons, astrocytes, pericytes and microby the Defense Advanced Research Proj- vascular endothelial cells.

Results

Conclusion