In August 2019, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine; Bioengineering and Material Science; and Engineering published a groundbreaking research development in Nature Medicine. Led in part by Mina Massaro-Giordano, MD, Vatinee Y. Bunya, MD, MSCE, and Vivian Lee, MD in the Department of Ophthalmology, this study demonstrates the successful creation and testing of an artificial human eye model that can be used to replicate and study diseases affecting the surface of the eyes.

The device is a blinking, in-vitro model of the human ocular surface, designed and constructed by Dan Huh, PhD, Associate Professor of Bioengineering in the Department of Bioengineering and Jeongyun Seo, a graduate student in Dr. Huh’s lab. His lab specializes in creating organs-on-a-chip that simulate their counterparts within the body. This allows for in depth scrutiny of the functions and malfunctions of these organs that would not be feasible otherwise. 

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