Integrating Nanomedicine and Organs-on-a-Chip for Enhanced Drug Development

The last two decades have witnessed explosive growth in nanoengineering and nanomedicine. In particular, engineered nanoparticles have garnered great attention due to their potential to enable new capabilities such as controlled and targeted drug delivery for the treatment of various diseases. With rapid progress in nanoparticle research, increasing efforts are being made to develop new technologies for in vitro modeling and analyses of the efficacy and safety of nanotherapeutics in human physiological systems. These nano-scaled materials with various structures and morphologies exhibit tailored functions, making them interact with different bio-systems in a very specific manner. Significant steps forward have been achieved. In particular, the field of material science saw a revolution in the application field where the control of composition, size, morphology, and surface functionalization enabled highly tissue-specific delivery and controlled release of therapeutic payloads for the treatment of cancer, respiratory diseases, neurological diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and more. Together with the nanoengineering and nanomedicine fields, in the last decades, more elaborated technologies have emerged to investigate cellular interactions deeply and to explore previously inaccessible biological questions, as well as to predict drug targets and efficacy and model human diseases. An example of such a technology is Organs-on-a-Chip (OoC), human-specific tissues embedded in a microfluidic chip that mimics key features of the human body’s composition and functionality. OoC platforms have been developed for creating an in vitro environment in which physiological compartments are simplified and physically separated yet can still interact, allowing for observations that would otherwise be impossible in vivo. A primary advantage of OoC systems is the capacity to incorporate flow. This feature enables shear forces to be applied to the cells, permitting nutrients and drugs to perfuse at different concentrations and timepoints. This configuration allows different OoCs to be connected, thereby providing the capacity to mimic organ–organ interactions. OoC approach can produce levels of tissue and organ functionality, in addition to mimicry of human disease states, not possible with conventional 2D and 3D culture systems, allowing to overcome one of the major challenges facing medicine today: the inability of preclinical testing results to predict drug responses in humans. Indeed, by providing a platform to emulate the structural and functional complexity of human tissues and organ units in ways not possible in traditional cell culture, OoC offers a promising complementary approach to animal experimentation and a valuable preclinical model. Although important breakthroughs have been achieved in nanotechnological and microfluidics tools fabrication and characterization, this research domain is still in its infancy. Further investigations are needed to establish the biological effects and mechanisms underlying human physiology and so improve drug development.

This research topic aims to attract leading contributions in different topics to highlight the latest developments in nanomedicine as well as in OoC technology, with a particular focus on drug delivery, nanoparticle development, and human models. We are willing to receive Original Research papers, Reviews, Mini Reviews, Opinion, and Perspective contributions.

To gather further insights into the integration of nanotechnology and Organs-on-a-Chip platforms, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
- Advances in nanoparticle design and functionalization for targeted drug delivery
- Development and application of Organs-on-a-Chip for disease modeling
- Comparative studies between OoC systems and traditional in vitro models
- Mechanistic studies on nanoparticle interactions with human tissues in OoC
- Innovations in microfluidic technologies for enhanced OoC performance
- Evaluation of the efficacy and safety of nanotherapeutics using OoC platforms
- Cross-disciplinary approaches combining nanomedicine and microfluidics for drug developments.

Keywords: Nanomaterials, organs-on-a-chip, nanotechnology, nanomedicine, drug delivery, tissue engineering, regeneration, biosensing

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.