From June 9-13, 2025, the µOrganoLab team attended the MPS World Summit 2025 in Brussels, joining 1,500 participants from 40 countries, and 100 industry exhibitors from around the globe. The energy, growth, and momentum in the microphysiological systems (MPS) community were truly inspiring. This year’s summit made it abundantly clear: the field is undergoing a major evolution — shifting from technical platform development toward solving real-world biological and regulatory challenges.
Here are our key takeaways from this exciting event:
1. The Evolving Focus of the MPS Field
The field is growing up. While early conferences were heavily focused on platform engineering — materials, chip designs, and fluidics — the spotlight in 2025 was firmly on biological applications and translational research.
- Organoid-based models dominated much of the scientific program, with far fewer contributions on platform or engineering innovation.
- Scaling, upstream integration, and throughput enhancement were major discussion points — but progress was mainly driven by biological improvements, not new technical designs.
- This trend signals a maturing field, moving beyond proof-of-concept devices towards systems that directly tackle disease modeling, drug development, and safety testing.
2. Regulatory Engagement: Progress, But Still Work Ahead
One of the most promising developments is the growing involvement of regulators. MPS models are beginning to find their way into drug development, chemical safety testing, and even food safety assessments.
- Despite this, clear guidance is still lacking. Regulatory presentations often highlighted intent but not implementation.
- There is an urgent need to adapt existing frameworks to better accommodate multi-method approaches — combining MPS data with computational models, human data, and other non-animal methodologies.
- A stronger, coordinated effort from both the MPS community and regulatory bodies will be essential for broader acceptance.
3. Industry Collaboration: Growing, But Cautious
The relationship between MPS developers and the pharmaceutical industry is deepening.
- Pharma companies are no longer just customers; they are becoming co-developers, especially where MPS models can de-risk preclinical decisions.
- However, pharma’s primary focus remains on drug development. Seamless integration of MPS into existing development pipelines is seen as the most efficient and scalable path forward.
- The demand is clear: MPS solutions must directly address bottlenecks in drug discovery to gain widespread adoption.
4. Community, Communication, and Growth
The sheer size and diversity of this year’s summit, with 700+ posters and 140+ scientific talks show how far the field has come. Initiatives like the EUROoCS Academy were a standout, offering accessible educational formats that help onboard newcomers and encourage open dialogue.
- One clear takeaway: progress often starts informally. Conversations in hallways, over coffee or a beer at night, and during poster sessions are where collaborations form and solutions emerge.
- Sharing real-world implementation stories — even when things don’t go perfectly — is essential to move the field forward.
5. Critical Challenges and Gaps Remain
Despite the optimism, several key challenges were highlighted:
- Immunology remains underrepresented. The integration of immune components into MPS models is still rare, despite its critical importance for accurate disease and toxicity modeling.
- Engineering innovation is slowing. Many participants noted that while biological complexity is advancing, progress in core engineering (e.g., new materials, chip designs, automation) has stalled — a gap that could limit future scalability.
- Standardization is urgently needed. The lack of shared protocols, benchmarks, and quality controls remains a barrier to broader adoption.
- Science communication is a weak point. Efforts to explain MPS technologies — especially in the context of the 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement of animal use) — to policymakers, industry stakeholders, and the public are still insufficient. Structured outreach is needed.
Looking Ahead: A Community Poised for Impact
The MPS World Summit 2025 left us feeling both energized and challenged. It’s clear that the field is transitioning from an emerging technology to a core tool in biomedical research and safety assessment. But for this promise to be fully realized, stakeholders across disciplines — scientists, engineers, regulators, and industry — must collaborate even more closely.
In the µOrganoLab, we’re proud to be part of this dynamic community and excited to contribute to solutions that will make MPS a standard tool for safer, faster, and more human-relevant research!
