Microfluidic chip could reduce animal testing

Imagine that new pharmaceuticals could be tested directly on a chip and in a matter of minutes. Such a lab-on-a-chip would then be able to detect potentially harmful substances at the very beginning of drug discovery. ‘If you can find the potential danger in the early stages of testing pharmaceuticals, you can reduce costs of clinical trials and reduce animal testing,’ says Floris van den Brink, UT researcher who has developed such a method.