Organ-on-Silicon

The cost and the development time of pharamecutical products are often severely affected by the in vitro tests currently employed in pharmaceutical R&D. These assays are often failing to accurately recapitulate diseases and to predict human responses to new medicines. Organ-on-Chip (OOC) devices are designed to result in advanced in vitro assays that better replicate human responses. The increasing interest and demand for this new class of devices is pushing for a quick commercialization of these tools. However, the currently employed fabrication processes pose major technical hurdles towards large-scale manufacturing, higher throughput and robustness, which are important steps for industrial adoption. This thesis aims to address these challenges, by implementing conventional cleanroom-compatible microfabrication processes for their fabrication. The aim is to copy, in the OOC field, what has been done in the microelectro- mechanical system (MEMS) field, where the standardization of surface patterning techniques using lithography and etching have been a major factor in their success. The OOCs resulting from this effort are named Organ-on-Silicon (OOS) devices in this thesis...