Recordings of the PSIS workshop ‘Organ on Chip: Towards Standardization’ are now available

Posted on: 28/03/2024

The Putting Science into Standards (PSIS) initiative is an annual joint action of the Joint Research Centre with the EU Standardization Organizations CEN & CENELEC which “aim to facilitate the identification of emerging science and technology areas that could benefit from standardisation activities to enable innovation and promote industrial competitiveness”.

This year’s workshop brought together all relevant stakeholders (academia, industry, standardisers and policy makers from different fields) to discuss the current status of Organ-on-Chip (OoC) technology, also known as Microphysiological Systems (MPS), and to exchange views on their future development, areas of application and requirements for standardization. OoCs can mimic the physiology of the human or animal body at a cellular, tissue, organ, or organs system level. This technology has the potential to revolutionize many scientific areas. It can help to perform safety assessments for various different consumer products such as drugs, chemicals, food products and cosmetics, and it can help to contribute to the replacement or reduction of animal testing.

The workshop included plenary and specific track sessions on the use of OoCs in different fields (life sciences, engineering and regulatory and data reporting) as it is a multidisciplinary technology. All track sessions talked about the relevance of OoC standardisation, the priorities to achieve it and any other recommendations on the next steps. The recordings and presentations of the PSIS workshop are available here.

Other EU initiatives to promote the use of OoC technology already exist. For example, the ORCHID project (Organ-on-Chip in development), which is a part of Horizon 2020, ran from 1 October 2017 until 1 October 2019. This project aimed to create a roadmap for OoC technology and build a network for all relevant stakeholders in the field. The main findings of this project, including standardisation and qualification recommendations, are compiled in a summary report which can be downloaded here.

The ORCHID project was quickly followed-up by the launch of the European Organ-on-Chip Society (EUROoCS) which aims to create a better understanding of OoC technologies by providing updated information on the technology to all involved stakeholders and foster collaborations between experts from different backgrounds. This will help to advance knowledge transfer, create future opportunities for the use of OoCs and hence help to bring the technology to the market.

 

Link to the event website: here.

Link to the PSIS Brochure on OoCs: here.

PSIS workshop promotional image