Organ printing technology can also be combined with microfluidic technology to develop organs-on-chips. These organs-on-chips have the potential to be used for disease models, aiding in drug discovery, and performing high-throughput assays. Organ-on-chips work by providing a 3D model that imitates the natural extracellular matrix, allowing them to display realistic responses to drugs. Thus far, research has been focused on developing liver-on-a-chip and heart-on-a-chip, but there exists the potential to develop an entire body-on-a-chip model.
By combining 3D printed organs, researchers are able to create a body-on-a-chip. The heart-on-a-chip model has already been used to investigate how several drugs with heart rate-based negative side effects, such as the chemotherapeutic drug doxorubicin could affect people on an individual basis. The new body-on-a-chip platform includes liver, heart, lungs, and kidney-on-a-chip. The organs-on-a-chip are separately printed or constructed and then integrated together. Using this platform drug toxicity studies are performed in high throughput, lowering the cost and increasing the efficiency in the drug-discovery pipeline.