In December 2018, UCL Hospitals Charitable Foundation was delighted to receive a generous donation of £50,000 from The Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust, in support of the outstanding £85,800 costs of a Principal Investigator for our ground-breaking ‘Lung-on-a-Chip’ project. The Trust's significant gift will go a long way towards completing our work in modifying, refining and improving the world’s first artificial fully-functioning ‘human lung’ microchip.

 

Lung-on-a-Chip, under the leadership of Principal Investigator Dr. Celine Denais, and Professor Sam Janes, will ultimately be the most accurate reproduction of a living, breathing human lung in existence. This will enable us to better understand the active mechanisms of early lung cancer. 

 

As well as receiving this wonderful donation from The Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust, we have also been fortunate enough to secure £150,000 from both The Welton Foundation and The Kirby Laing Foundation. Dr. Denais' refined Lung-on-a-Chip is now in the advanced stages of design, and it will be the closest model of the living process ever created. Lung-on-a-Chip will allow us to see biological mechanisms and behaviours in the lung that we never knew existed as well as molecular-scale activities going on at very early stages. We will see developments that occur in human lung cells but not in animals.​ 

 

Lung cancer is the world’s leading cancer killer accounting for a quarter (27%) of all cancer deaths. UK statistics are among Europe’s worst having barely improved in 40 years. Lung cancer is a considerable humanistic, social & economic burden. 

 

Lung-on-a-Chip is a truly pioneering project. Artificial organs/tissues are still an emerging embryonic technology and there are only 2-3 other academic groups in the world that we know of currently seeking to improve existing lung microchips.devices. We are the only group in the UK doing this groundbreaking work. 

 

We are very grateful to all of our funders for supporting Lung-on-a-Chip, thank you.