Transform your research

Immunotherapy

Traditional 2D or even 3D cell culture models in well plates do not reproduce the dynamic unidirectional fluid flow present in the human body making them suboptimal for translational immunotherapy research. Furthermore, the ability to evaluate therapies at scale is crucial in any drug development program for identifying new immunotherapies such as CAR-TCR’s. These therapies face major challenges, including limited CAR-TCR cell infiltration into solid tumours and tumour microenvironment evasion. Currently, there are a lack of technologies capable of assessing physiological relevant, patient-specific responses which provide dynamic fluid flow at scale.

Mera allows investigators to culture complex 3D tissue models with immunotherapies in the presence of dynamic fluid flow while assessing off target or solid tumour effects.

Toxicology

With safety concerns being the principal cause for phase 1 and 2 clinical trial failures, it is clear that more predictive models are required to improve the translatability of data from the laboratory to the clinic.

Safety toxicology testing traditionally occurs in simple cell culture systems which lack physiological complexity, and animal models that are limited by cross-species differences. Many drugs with clean toxicity profiles in these systems will present with adverse effects in human trials leading to costly late-stage withdrawals and potential harm to study participants.

Mera allows scientists to identify and address potential side effects early in the drug discovery pipeline, using advanced in vitro single-, or multi-organ models, whose phenotype and functions mimic those in vivo. It provides a deep mechanistic, human-specific, understanding of potential drug toxicity that complements data derived from in vivo models for more insightful next step decision making.

Personalised
Medicine

The reality is that, even when two patients are diagnosed with the same disease, the behaviors of their respective phenotypes remain quite diversified, making each individual’s disease one of its own kind. To this end, microphysiological systems (MPS), featuring miniaturized units of functional tissues or organs, may bring us true precision medicine, by allowing screening of drugs or drug combinations in a personalized manner before the most effective options applied to one’s own self.

A small-scale microfluidic palte can be designed to integrate various biomimetic cues, including those of biophysical and biochemical in nature, in addition to the tissue/organ models hosted within, which may derive from the patient’ cells – or sometimes simply a piece of patient’s explanted tissue. When multiple chips each containing a different tissue/organ model are interconnected into a compartmentalized system, the multi-tissue-drug interactions may further be picked up, to better predict how the drug is exerting effects on the patient as an organism.