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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		How does a 'heart-on-a-chip' work?
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:03
	Publish Date:		2016-02-23 00:00:00
	Description:		Bioengineers at the University of California, Berkeley made headlines when they developed a “heart-on-a-chip”. This silicone device, which houses human heart tissue derived from adult stem cells, could someday replace animal models as a drug safety screening tool. But how does something like this actually work? We asked bioengineer Kevin Healy, who led the research. "The chip is made similarly to how one makes a computer chip and that’s called microfabrication. So, we use microfabrication technology to make a small portion that’s like a chamber to hold cells; and then another portion that’s like a blood vessel to allow fluid to bathe the cells and deliver the drug and also nutrients and removal of waste." The team has tested about six or seven cardiac drugs using their chip. "Now it’s starting to look at a much wider array of drugs that would be known to cause a clinical failure and seeing if we can pick that up with the cardiac chip."
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