Understanding the immune system is of great importance for the development of drugs and the design of medical implants. Traditionally, two-dimensional static cultures have been used to investigate the immune system in vitro, while animal models have been used to study the immune system’s function and behavior in vivo. However, these conventional models do not fully emulate the complexity of the human immune system or the human in vivo microenvironment. Consequently, many promising preclinical findings have not been reproduced in human clinical trials. Organ-on-a-chip platforms can provide a solution to bridge this gap by offering human micro-(patho)physiological systems in which the immune system can be studied. This review provides an overview of the existing immune-organs-on-a-chip platforms, with a special emphasis on interorgan communication. In addition, future challenges to develop a comprehensive immune system-on-chip model are discussed.

中文翻译：

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芯片上的免疫器官和免疫细胞：生物医学应用概述。

了解免疫系统对于药物开发和医疗植入物设计至关重要。传统上，二维静态培养已用于体外研究免疫系统，而动物模型已用于研究体内免疫系统的功能和行为。但是，这些常规模型不能完全模拟人类免疫系统或人类体内微环境的复杂性。因此，在人类临床试验中尚未再现许多有希望的临床前发现。芯片上的器官平台可以通过提供可以研究免疫系统的人类微（病理）生理系统，提供弥合这一差距的解决方案。这篇综述提供了现有的片上免疫器官平台的概述，特别着重于器官间的交流。