Scientific American recently published an article regarding the use of BioChips in the drug testing process. The typical new drug can go through years of harsh lab analysis to find those nasty little side-effects that are quickly disclaimed at the end of commercials; BioChips may be a safer and faster way to discover potential problems in mass-market medications. Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of California, Berkeley, and Solidus Biosciences have recently published reported there findings on uses for two medical BioChips, MetaChip and DataChip. MetaChip is a small glass sheet dotted with human liver enzymes while DataChip is a similar structure laced with cell cultures from the bladder, kidney or liver. Testing compounds of either, or both, chips can show how a drug will interact with the human body. This process also has the added benefit of negating the need for live animal testing. Read the entire article at Scientific American
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