Organ-on-a-chip mimics coronary heart's biomechanical properties
This is an I-Wire heart-on-a-chip device with magnified window showing cardiac fiber. Credit: VIIBRE Vanderbilt University The human heart beats more than 2.5 billion times in an average lifetime. Now scientists at Vanderbilt University have created a three-dimensional organ-on-a-chip that can mimic the heart's amazing biomechanical properties. "We created the I-Wire Heart-on-a-Chip so that we can understand why cardiac cells behave the way they do by asking the cells questions, instead of just watching them," said Gordon A. Cain University Professor John Wikswo, who heads up the project. "We believe it could prove invaluable in studying cardiac diseases, drug screening and drug development, and, in the future, in personalized medicine by identifying the cells taken from patients that can be used to patch damaged hearts effectively." The device and the results of initial experiments demonstrating that it faithfully reproduces the response of ca...