Improving Inflammatory Disease Drug Development With Organ-On-A-Chip Technology

Our immune system constantly monitors for signs of danger, injury, and infection within the human body. One of its methods involves circulating immune cells, which traverse the bloodstream until they are recruited to infiltrate infected tissue. Once there, they respond to and clear the infection, heal the tissue, and eventually either perish or return to the bloodstream.This process must be tightly regulated and self-limited; otherwise, people would suffer from various autoimmune diseases from an early age. Thus, to ensure the immune system functions properly and maintains health and homeostasis, the recruitment and response of immune cells must be highly selective.

While the immune system operates properly for the majority of people, this process becomes dysregulated for individuals afflicted with chronic inflammatory diseases. Immune cells are excessively mobilized to unintended locations, resulting in further dysregulated immune cell recruitment and reactions. This perpetuates a vicious cycle of pro-inflammatory responses, ultimately causing tissue damage and dysfunction, leading to disease.

Continue reading to learn more about the global health burden of inflammatory disease, challenges associated with modeling inflammatory disease, a more human-relevant model for inflammatory disease modeling and drug development, and the future of inflammatory disease research.