Dan Huh Wins 2018 Lush Science Prize for Organ-on-a-Chip Work

Bionengineering’s Dan Huh and his BIOLines research group were awarded the 2018 Lush Science Prize for work on organ-on-a-chip devices. The cometic company’s prize is designed to encourage work on alternatives to animal testing; Huh’s eye-on-a-chip embodied the themes of its 2018 Conference in Berlin.

The cosmetics company Lush has a long-standing commitment against the use of animal testing. Beyond having a strict policy against it in its own products and supply chains, the company is in its seventh year of awarding the Lush Prize to scientists, organizers and communicators that develop or campaign for animal-free alternatives.

This year, Dan Huh, Wilf Family Term Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioengineering, along with his BIOlines research group, were recognized with the Lush Science Prize for work on microfabricated devices that mimic the function of various organs using living cells.

These organ-on-a-chip devices, which include an eye-on-a-chip, a placenta-on-a-chip and several others, allow for rapid toxicity and drug-delivery testing as well as the simulation of various diseases.

The Lush Prize comes with a £50,000 award and was presented at a conference in Berlin last week, organized around questions inspired by his group’s research: “Is there an end in sight for animal testing? Can Organ-on-a-Chip replace animal use in safety testing with advanced human focused approaches?” Huh provided a keynote address.