The future of human biology isn’t about better animal models - it’s about building human organs on chips that think like the body does.
Don Ingber, founding director of Harvard’s Wyss Institute, has one of the most unconventional origin stories in the field. In 1975, as a Yale undergrad, he took a sculpture class where students built floating structures held together only by tension; no rods touching, no rigid frames. At the same time, he watched cells in culture flatten, round up, and then flatten again.
The connection clicked: cells aren’t rigid blocks; they’re dynamic tensegrity structures, governed by forces, tension, and mechanical cues. That conceptual shift reshaped his view of biology.
Fast-forward, and Ingber’s team would eventually build something that changed the definition of a “model system”: organ-on-chip devices the size of a thumb drive, lined with living human cells, that recapitulate organ-level physiology with astonishing fidelity.
Key Takeaways:
Animal testing has a low success rate: 70% of clinical trials fail, with neurology hitting 95% failure rate. Organs-on-chip technology offers an alternative method that can help predict patient treatment responses
How a chip mimics an organ: Two microfluidic channels with different tissue types separated by a porous membrane. Cyclic suction mimics breathing or peristalsis
The microbiome breakthrough: Culturing complex bacterial communities for days using flow and mechanical forces creates a microbiome-like culture compared to static cultures
Personalized medicine economics: Test 100 patient-derived chips, identify the 50 responders, screen for toxicity, run focused clinical trials on the 35 most promising candidates
The Wyss origin story: A donor who walked away for two years, and a Martha’s Vineyard meeting that led to a $125 million gift
Why institutional structure matters: Independent governance, no deans, separate finances from Harvard and MIT
The Boston/Cambridge singularity: Universities, hospitals, VCs, pharma all in walking distance. You can’t recreate this by distributing talent globally
What’s at stake now: Immigration restrictions and funding cuts threaten the human capital that drives American innovation
This conversation goes beyond the science. We get into what it actually takes to build an institution like the Wyss, and how we’re watching the American scientific leadership face an existential threat with immigration restrictions and ideological constraints.
And in case you’re short on time, here’s a quick teaser:
Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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