Multi-organ toxicity and efficacy test platform for Personalized medicine & Drug development

Introduction

The pharmaceutical and medical fields need more predictive models to assess the effects of drugs on patients. The demand arises from the desire to replace animal tests, enhance predictability, and reduce drug development time and costs. In personalized medicine, there's a need for tools like companion diagnostics to identify patients who will benefit and respond to specific treatments.

Regulatory Changes

Recent changes in EU and US regulations, allowing drug candidates to be submitted without animal testing, have led to the development of alternative solutions like 3D cell culture and organs-on-a-chip. These technologies have shown promise in predicting drug effects on patients, but three scientific challenges persist:

1. Including functional vascular interfaces
2. Multilayer tissue equivalent reconstruction without PDMS
3. Cultivating interconnected organs with varying oxygen concentrations

Additionally, two industrial bottlenecks exist:

1. Compatibility with multiwell plate formats
2. The need for reproducible biological protocols

Innovations by Cherry Biotech

Cherry Biotech has developed a 3D cell culture platform that addresses these bottlenecks with three innovations:

• The Microfluidic Perfusion Lid (MPL)
• The Hydroflat
• The Cubix control unit

These innovations have received approval from industrial and hospital partners and have been patented in Europe and the US.

Market Focus

The company aims to address the preclinical drug development (CubiX RUO, 2026) market and the precision medicine market (CubiX CDx, 2030). The preclinical drug development market is growing rapidly due to favorable regulatory changes, while the precision oncology market is driven by biomarker-based assays for guiding medical treatments.

Impact on Health and Welfare

Cherry Biotech's work not only has financial implications but also has a significant impact on human health and animal welfare by offering predictive models and reducing the need for animal testing. It contributes to technological advancement and innovation in the EU.