In the pharmaceutical industry, making a new drug costs an average of $5 billion and can take anywhere from ten to fifteen years to develop. Bioengineering professor Kevin Healy of the University of California, Berkeley says a large part of the problem is because preclinical trials rely heavily on animal models that don’t translate well to humans.

"Animals are not humans, they don’t have the same response to drugs. Many well-known experts in the field will tell you that the animal experiments really aren’t very good predictors of drug function. They do help out with safety, but not efficacy or performance of the drug."

So, Healy’s team developed a small cardiac chip that effectively models how the human heart responds to drugs. He says that the device could significantly cut the time and cost it takes to develop a drug.

"We believe, ultimately, if we and others are successful in developing various microphysiological systems, we’ll have a significant improvement in both."