Bryn Nelson Columnist

This is your brain on a chip. This is your liver on a slide. This is your body in a supercomputer. Any questions?

It’s a bit more complicated than that, but recently scientists have provided a sneak preview of the future of biomedicine with a range of projects seeking to assemble virtual humans — or parts of them — on computers and “labs on a chip.” Someday, the descendants of these sophisticated new programs and devices could serve as our stand-ins for clinical tests on drugs, cosmetics and toxic compounds.

“I would predict that this century is going to be dominated by our ability to handle biomedical problems in a computational domain,” said Peter Coveney, director of the Centre for Computational Science at University College London.

The increasing ability of computers and biochips to mimic brain chemistry, internal organs, and the interactions between drugs and viruses such as HIV could help reduce the reliance on animal testing to understand the potency and side effects of pharmaceuticals. A more informed leap between experiments on dish-grown cells and lab animals, in turn, could lead to a better drug development process. And eventually, the technology could usher in a new era of personalized medicine in which rapid tests tell doctors which treatments have the best chances of success for individual patients.

Billions of neurons
But first, researchers have more than a little tinkering to do, especially given that the brain boasts tens of billions of neurons and that copying its chemistry would require replicating the thousands of connections emanating from every cell. Andre Levchenko, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and an affiliated researcher with the Institute for NanoBioTechnology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said the monumental task is nonetheless important for understanding Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other conditions that affect the brain.

“After a stroke, a huge part of the brain tissue may become disabled,” Levchenko said. “If one understands how this network is put together in the first place, it’s possible to predict what should be done to put the tissue back into place after the trauma.”

He and colleagues at Johns Hopkins have begun tackling the problem by placing neurons onto a plastic-like “lab on a chip” and then introducing two signals in the form of liquid chemicals. By controlling how the fluids flow through the multilayered chip with tiny valves and channels, the researchers can adjust how and when the chemical cues reach the cells.

The neurons haven’t always moved in expected ways after receiving their cues. But Levchenko said the unexpected results, published last month in the British journal Lab on a Chip, allowed his lab to test new possibilities. “If we don’t get surprised, then it means that we already know everything,” he said.

Although the device was initially designed for more basic research, he said it could provide a “wonderful tool” for screening how potential drugs affect the cells’ responses. Similarly, he said scientists could use the chips to engineer basic brain tissue or begin exploring more complicated interactions among different cell types such as neurons and muscle cells.

“I think there’s a quantum leap here by changing not only the technology but also the philosophy of how these experiments are done,” Levchenko said. “It may be difficult to control what happens inside the cells, but in this day and age, we should be able to control exceedingly well what happens outside of the cell.”

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