Microphysiological Systems: 3D Organoids and Organ-on-a-Chip for In Vitro Drug Screening

To provide practical understanding of how 3D organoids, organ-on-a-chip systems, and AI tools are used for drug screening, toxicity testing, and next-generation biomedical research.

• Understand 3D organoid architecture and its role in drug screening.
• Learn organ-on-a-chip design, fluid flow, and tissue barrier concepts.
• Explore automated image analysis for organoid measurement.
• Understand microfluidic flow and wall shear stress simulation.
• Apply basic AI/ML methods for toxicity prediction.

📅 Day 1: 3D Organoid Architectures & Automated Screening

• Moving from traditional flat 2D cell cultures to advanced 3D human-relevant biological models
• The shift from animal testing toward modern alternative methodologies in biomedical research
• Understanding 3D organoid cultures and their role in replicating human tissue-like structures
• Scaling up organoid systems for screening, testing, and translational research applications
• Biology in 3D: how organoids help model tissue layers, growth behavior, and cellular organization
• The data challenge in organoid research: limitations of manual cell counting and visual assessment
• Automated visual profiling for measuring organoid size, roundness, growth changes, and screening outcomes
• Skills gained: high-throughput screening concepts and automated cell measurement approaches
• Tools covered: Google Colab, Python, open-source image processing tools, microscopy image datasets

Hands-on Activity:

• Automated 3D Organoid Image Analysis in Google Colab: Use open-source image processing tools to segment 3D organoid microscopy images and extract key physical metrics such as size, roundness, and growth-related changes

📅 Day 2: Organ-on-a-Chip Engineering & Fluid Dynamics

• Replicating blood flow, tissue barriers, and multi-organ interactions using organ-on-a-chip platforms
• Introduction to tissue chip design and the role of microfluidics in human-relevant disease modeling
• Fluid dynamics in organ-on-a-chip systems: how continuous liquid flow mimics human blood vessels
• Understanding how fluid flow stimulates cell growth, tissue function, and physiological responses
• Barrier models: designing chips that replicate complex biological boundaries such as the Blood-Brain Barrier
• Modeling integrated systems such as the gut-liver axis for drug testing and toxicity studies
• Real-time sensing in tissue chips: monitoring cell health without destroying the biological sample
• Skills gained: tissue chip design principles and fluid shear stress analysis
• Tools covered: Google Colab, Python, microfluidic flow simulation concepts, basic fluid dynamics calculations

Hands-on Activity:

• Microfluidic Flow and Shear Stress Simulation in Google Colab: Simulate fluid flow through a microfluidic channel, calculate wall shear stress, and evaluate whether a chip design matches human physiological conditions

📅 Day 3: AI-Driven Drug Screening & Toxicity Prediction

• Combining laboratory data with Artificial Intelligence to predict drug safety and screening outcomes
• The convergence of tissue chip data, organoid screening, and AI-driven drug discovery workflows
• Understanding how experimental data from organ-on-a-chip systems can support AI model training
• Virtual screening: using public chemical databases to digitally evaluate large numbers of compounds
• Introduction to cheminformatics for handling chemical structures and molecular descriptors
• Safety testing with machine learning: predicting liver, heart, or kidney toxicity before physical trials
• Modeling toxic versus safe compound behavior using structured chemical and biological data
• Skills gained: chemistry software basics, cheminformatics concepts, and predictive machine learning
• Tools covered: Google Colab, Python, public chemical datasets, cheminformatics tools, Scikit-learn

Hands-on Activity:

• AI-Based Drug Toxicity Prediction in Google Colab: Process chemical data structures and train a machine learning classifier to predict whether a new drug molecule is toxic or safe

• Understand the role of 3D organoids and organ-on-a-chip systems in next-generation drug screening.
• Differentiate between traditional 2D culture models and advanced 3D microphysiological models.
• Explain how organoids can be used to replicate tissue-like structures for disease modeling and drug response studies.
• Describe how microfluidic chip systems simulate blood flow, tissue barriers, and organ-level interactions.
• Perform basic automated image analysis for organoid measurement using open-source tools.
• Simulate fluid flow in a microfluidic channel and interpret wall shear stress values.
• Understand the role of real-time sensing in monitoring cell and tissue health.
• Process basic chemical structure data for virtual screening workflows.
• Build a simple machine learning model for toxicity prediction.
• Gain practical exposure to the convergence of biotechnology, microfluidics, image analysis, cheminformatics, and AI in drug discovery.