MIMIC · Mimicking organs on chips for high throughput drug screening and basic research

Mimicking organs on chips for high throughput drug screening and basic research

Development of novel drugs is a costly and time-consuming process. Often years of investments are lost as it turns out that the drug candidate is toxic to humans or does not have the effects observed previously in simple cell culture test in patients. Drug candidates are usually also tested in animals, however given species differences the behaviour of a drug candidate in animals is not always a good predictor for its behaviour in humans. Animal testing bears also several ethical issues as it might heavily impact on animal welfare. Thus there is a high demand in the pharmaceutical industry to have more reliable early test systems. Organ on chip technology is a recent research & development area aiming at mimicking organ functionality in microfluidic systems. This technology allows the modelling of certain tissue/organ features using spatially defined culturing of cells usually under flow mimicking for example blood flow or air flow (for example in a lung on chip). In particular, organ on chips are ideally suited to establish the spatially defined co-culturing of different cell types, which increase the complexity significantly compared to standard 2D or 3D cell cultures. Thus organ on chip technology might be able to close the currently existing gap for more reliable test models for the pharmaceutical industry. The ITN-MIMIC represents an international research consortium between academic partners and industry with a joint interest to further develop organ on chip technology and to exploit this technology for efficient drug development and basic research. MIMIC focuses in particular on the further developments of two organ on chip models, which is a kidney on chip model and a gut on chip model. Aim of MIMIC is to develop models for these organs, which are suitable for high-content drug screening. Furthermore, using state of the art genetic engineering tools (CRISPR) and modern stem cell differentiation protocols MIMIC aims to develop specific disease models for the kidney and gut, by genetically engineering cell lines harbouring patient mutations known to cause disease. These models have been used to investigate disease mechanism in more detail but also to identify potential drug candidates and drug targets to treat the disease. Conclusions: MIMIC has successfully trained four early stage researchers in the framework of a tailored MIMIC training programme and a local PhD programme in the field of organ on chip technology suitable for high-throughput drug screening. All ESRs have submitted their PhD thesis or are close to submit it. Furthermore, MIMIC has successfully established novel human in vitro disease models for inflammatory bowel disease and Lowe syndrome suitable for drug and drug target screening. MIMIC has performed a number of outreach activities raising in particular awareness for the emerging technology of organ on chip technology, including questions of animal welfare consideration in research and challenges of modern drug development as well as joint European research in general.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз