In drug discovery, animal experimentation is a critical tool for evaluating drug safety and efficacy. However, due to the biological and physiological differences between humans and animals, assessing human responses to drugs basced on animal experiments has limitations and the results may not necessarily be transferable to humans. Ethical considerations also surround animal testing, prompting the need for alternatives that can yield more accurate results while minimizing animal usage. Microphysiological Systems (MPS) are emerging as one such promising alternative, attracting significant attention in the field.

The innovative kinetic pump integrated microfluidic plate developed in this study enables medium perfusion between wells without using the conventional pump-driven system with tubes. This plate consists of six multi-organ MPS units to improve throughput and the plate design, based on a 24-well plate, meets the ANSI/SLAS (formerly SBS) microplate standards, making it easy to shift from normal monoculture to co-culture.

Co-culture experiments with hepatocytes and intestinal cells showed increased TEER, which indicates the barrier function of the intestine, and gene expression levels related to the metabolism of hepatocytes.