As he got deeper and deeper into biomedical research over the past decade and a half, Duc-Huy Nguyen came to two conclusions:
- Given the genetic similarities between mice and humans, it’s understandable why the former are so frequently used in biological studies.
- Too many therapeutic possibilities tested in mice fail to translate to humans.
Nguyen wants to help change that disconnect by developing human organs-on-chip models that will allow biomedical researchers to better mimic human biology and disease.
“My hope is by better understanding human diseases and human biology, through these human organs-on-chip models, we can actually better come up with more translational interventions and therapies for patients,” says Nguyen. “We can make basic science research a little closer to the bedside than what we typically have in the current biomedical research environment.”
Nguyen joins the University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty in fall 2025 as an assistant professor of biomedical engineering after spending the past nine years as a postdoctoral researcher in two labs at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.
In developing so-called “organs-on-a-chip,” he’s specifically interested in studying vascular and liver biology, especially related to endothelial cells, which line blood vessels throughout the body. Nguyen hopes to better model the liver microenvironment to uncover the biological mechanics behind diseases and to test treatments.
In particular, Nguyen is interested in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (formerly referred to as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease), in which fat accumulates in the liver. More than 1/3 of the population in the United States has the condition, according to a 2024 study published in the journal Diabetes Spectrum.
“We don’t know the reason why that happens, but we do know that over time, if you don’t treat patients, they can progress further to go to cirrhosis or can develop cancers,” says Nguyen. “With that number exploding over time, that becomes a really major burden for the healthcare industry.”
Nguyen came to the United States at 20 from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and studied chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, where he encountered a faculty member studying how cells respond to mechanical forces to better understand how they migrate.
“That’s how I started learning about using engineering techniques to apply to biological problems,” he says.
While pursuing his PhD in chemical and biomolecular engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, he began working with microfluidic devices, which allow researchers to culture cells and study their interactions on a single chip.
When he joined Weill Cornell Medicine, he split his time between labs looking at vascular biology—he was a co-author on a 2020 Nature paper detailing a method for producing functioning blood vessels—and liver biology.
“Because of the training in different areas that I’ve had—microfluidic devices, vascular biology and liver biology—I want to encompass everything into my lab and start to build vascularized human liver-on-a-chip models, to be able to understand the liver biology but also try to model liver diseases,” he says.
Nguyen sees UW-Madison as the ideal place to do so. He’s excited to tap into the expertise of new colleagues like Paul Campagnola and Kevin Eliceiri on the extracellular matrix of his models, as well as David Beebe, a pioneer in microfluidic devices. He’ll teach BME 520: Stem Cell Bioengineering, a topic that speaks to another selling point for the university.
“UW-Madison is always the forefront for stem cell research,” he says, “so I’m really excited to leverage that expertise to push my research further into that direction using stem cells to be able to model human liver diseases.”