Date: 2013-10-16
Type of information: Collaboration agreement
Compound: human organs-on-chips, animal organs-on-chips
Company: AstraZeneca (UK) Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering - Harvard University (USA - MA)
Therapeutic area: Technology - Services
Type agreement: collaboration
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Disease:
Details: * On October 16, 2013, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and AstraZeneca have announced a collaboration that will leverage the Institute\'s Organs-on-Chips technologies to better predict safety of drugs in humans. Human Organs-on-Chips are composed of a clear, flexible polymer about the size of a computer memory stick, and contain hollow microfluidic channels lined by living human cells -- allowing researchers to recreate the physiological and mechanical functions of the organ, and to observe what happens in real time. The goal is to provide more predictive and useful measures of the efficacy and safety of potential new drugs in humans -- which could represent an important step in reducing the need for traditional animal testing.
The collaboration with AstraZeneca will apply the Institute’s advances in the development and validation of human organs-on-chips to develop new animal versions. These animal organs-on-chips will be tested alongside the human models to further understand the extent to which drug safety results in animals can predict how an investigational drug might impact humans.
The collaboration builds on the momentum the Wyss Institute has gained recently on its Organs-on-Chips research program. With support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)*, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the FDA, and pharmaceutical partners, more than ten Organs-on-Chips are currently under development at the Wyss Institute, including a lung, liver, kidney, gut, skin, blood-brain barrier, and bone marrow-on-a-chip; there is also a major effort to integrate these organ chips into \"a virtual human body on-chips\" that mimics whole body physiology.
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