Fig. 1

Representative BoC systems and future perspectives. (A) The BoC system created by Vunjak-Novakovic and colleagues: schematic of tissue components (left), the cell types utilized (middle), and validation and applications of the chip (right) [1]. NHDF: normal human dermal fibroblast; MSC: mesenchymal stromal cell; HUVEC: human umbilical venous endothelial cell. (B) A modular design approach to creating a representative six-organ BoC characterized by the sharing of a common “blood substitute”. The vascular channel is separated from the organ mimics by an endothelial barrier. (C) The application of iPSCs to generate patient-specific BoCs for personalized drug screening. By complementing the traditional drug development pipeline (conventional in vitro assays not shown) with personalized BoCs (from route ➀ route ➁), the ineffective and/or unsafe drugs for specific patients can “fail fast and fail early”, thus improving treatment outcomes at reduced costs. (D) Key considerations and technical challenges in establishing BoC systems