Organoids and organs-on-chips: systems for disease modeling, drug screening and identification of environmental risk factors for human illnesses

The two main modalities for three-dimensional (3D) cell culture systems are based on the production of organoids and on the engineering of organs-on-chips, which represent a substantial improvement for the study of disease modeling, engineering of novel systems for diagnosis and/or prognosis of different pathological conditions, analysis of organs develop-ment, potential use for autologous tissue transplantation, drug screening and identification of environmental risk factors for human maladies. Other developing technologies comprise organoids-on-chips and body-on-a-chip. Major contributions toward the development of 3D cell culture models derived from induced pluripotent stem cell technology, the analysis of tissue-resident somatic stem cells and the remarkable advances reported in the production of biomaterials. This article provides an overview on the standpoint of organoids, organs-on-chips, organoids-on-chips and body-on-a-chip in biomedical research, industrial settings and clinical applications.