In this video, you can see a 2017 Koch Institute Image Award winner, "Body of Knowledge." This research is part of the DARPA-funded Human-on-a-chip project, and researchers Collin Edington and Iris Lee describe the work. They are trying to create a way to model human physiology on a circuit.
If we could successfully mimic human physiology on a circuit, it would be a very helpful development in disease research. Often, experiments in disease research are performed in cell culture models that don't reflect the workings of the entire body. Animals are another kind of model that presents caveats of its own. This work could help get around some of the pitfalls of these systems.
In their winning image, a miniature, simple version of a human organ, in this case an organoid mimicking a brain, is shown growing on a synthetic gel. A "mass of cell body" is shown in pink in the center, with projections in green.
