Study advances impact of human organ-on-chip platforms
February 26, 2026 — Department of Biomedical Engineering faculty are partnering with health sciences colleagues to better understand how radiation affects human organ tissue—using miniature, three-dimensional systems known as organs on a chip.
The collaboration brings together three components on the Twin Cities campus: a heart model, a lung model and a blood-brain barrier model. Each replicates essential features of living tissue while allowing researchers to precisely study radiation exposure in ways that aren’t possible in patients.
Biomedical Engineering Professor Brenda Ogle is developing the heart component. Associate Professor Samira Azarin of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science is building a blood-brain barrier model, and project lead Angela Panoskaltsis-Mortari, a Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine in the University of Minnesota Medical School, is directing the lung model. All three are graduate faculty members with the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
Once the University of Minnesota components are finalized, the team will transfer the technology to collaborator Vincent Ho, director of the Center for Biotechnology at the Uniformed Services University in Maryland, for further studies.
Beyond this study, the collaboration is helping Ogle advance a broader goal.
“Our concept is to build a national facility with the capacity to make organ-on-a-chip models—typically made in small batches in siloed research laboratories—more broadly accessible. The facility will drive the scaled production, preservation, storage and distribution of such testbeds,” she said.
