De Chiara Francesco, Ferret-Miñana Ainhoa, Ramón-Azcón Javier
Biosensors for Bioengineering Group, Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), Baldiri I Reixac 10-12, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
ICREA-Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, 08010 Barcelona, Spain.
Biomedicines. 2021 Mar 2;9(3):248. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines9030248.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver affects about 25% of global adult population. On the long-term, it is associated with extra-hepatic compliances, multiorgan failure, and death. Various invasive and non-invasive methods are employed for its diagnosis such as liver biopsies, CT scan, MRI, and numerous scoring systems. However, the lack of accuracy and reproducibility represents one of the biggest limitations of evaluating the effectiveness of drug candidates in clinical trials. Organ-on-chips (OOC) are emerging as a cost-effective tool to reproduce in vitro the main NAFLD's pathogenic features for drug screening purposes. Those platforms have reached a high degree of complexity that generate an unprecedented amount of both structured and unstructured data that outpaced our capacity to analyze the results. The addition of artificial intelligence (AI) layer for data analysis and interpretation enables those platforms to reach their full potential. Furthermore, the use of them do not require any ethic and legal regulation. In this review, we discuss the synergy between OOC and AI as one of the most promising ways to unveil potential therapeutic targets as well as the complex mechanism(s) underlying NAFLD.
非酒精性脂肪性肝病影响着全球约25%的成年人口。从长远来看，它与肝外并发症、多器官衰竭和死亡有关。其诊断采用了各种侵入性和非侵入性方法，如肝活检、CT扫描、MRI以及众多评分系统。然而，缺乏准确性和可重复性是评估候选药物在临床试验中有效性的最大局限之一。器官芯片正作为一种经济高效的工具崭露头角，用于在体外重现非酒精性脂肪性肝病的主要致病特征以进行药物筛选。这些平台已经达到了高度的复杂性，产生了前所未有的大量结构化和非结构化数据，超出了我们分析结果的能力。添加用于数据分析和解释的人工智能层使这些平台能够充分发挥其潜力。此外，使用它们不需要任何伦理和法律法规。在本综述中，我们讨论器官芯片与人工智能之间的协同作用，这是揭示潜在治疗靶点以及非酒精性脂肪性肝病潜在复杂机制最有前景的方法之一。
