TissUse reports progress made in collaboration with AstraZeneca to use Microphysiological Systems in the drug development process

As part of the collaboration, the teams have explored the unmet need for a physiologically relevant human ex-vivo type 2 diabetes model.  The result was a human microfluidic two-organ-chip model to study pancreatic islet–liver cross-talk based on insulin and glucose regulation for up to 15 days in culture.  This work was recently published in Nature Scientific Reports (Bauer et al., 2017, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-14815-w).  Dr Tommy Andersson of AstraZeneca will present the data at the 3D cell models congress in Berlin on 24-25 January 2018. 

TissUse and AstraZeneca continue to work together to further develop this into a comprehensive type 2 diabetes-on-a-chip model.

TissUse’s Multi-Organ-Chip technology emulates multiple interacting human organs on a device the area of a microscope slide to imitate the complex processes in the human organism over both short and long periods of time. This technology is envisioned to clarify how the human organism reacts to new medication, cosmetic substances or chemicals without expensive animal testing.

“Miniaturized human Multi-Organ systems are capable of generating crucial, unprecedented data during preclinical assessment of drug candidates and are expected to increase success rate in drug development. We are happy to be able to support AstraZeneca in their aim to bring innovative medicines to patients worldwide,” says Dr. Uwe Marx, CEO of TissUse.

There is great potential for the innovative multi-organ-chip technology to enhance our approaches in drug development. Our collaboration with TissUse enables us to utilise the technology to advance our understanding of the biological control in key unmet disease areas such as type-2 diabetes. We look forward to the results from the advanced model that is currently under development,” said Dr. Regina Fritsche-Danielson, Head of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases at AstraZeneca’s IMED Biotech Unit.