Project description
Microfluidics-based 3D heart model for drug screening
The drug discovery pipeline conventionally screens candidate molecules in in vitro cultured cells. However, these hardly recapitulate the in vivo tissue/organ, leading to a high failure rate of drugs' clinical trials. Funded by the European Innovation Council, the 3DCardiacHTS project focuses on in vitro 3D models of the heart to test drugs for cardiovascular diseases. The proposed technology combines microfluidics and cardiac cells generated from human-induced pluripotent stem cells. The cells will be cultured in microchambers in a 3D strip configuration that better mimics the native heart tissue. The 3DCardiacHTS system will enable the high-throughput screening of drugs for heart conditions.
Objective
1. Cardiovascular disease is the number 1 cause of death worldwide. Novel cardiovascular drugs have a high failure rate of 91% in clinical trials. This failure rate is due to lack of proper cardiac models used to find new drugs. Drug discovery studies rely mainly on 2D culture models, which have insufficient predictive value of the human heart. A new in vitro 3D model has been developed by assembling human cardiomyocytes into a three-dimensional strip configuration (3D cardiac strip) that better mimics the native heart tissue. However, this system is not compatible with the high throughput setting needed to perform drug discovery screens. River BioMedics has found a unique solution to miniaturize the human 3D cardiac strips and use them in a high-throughput assay. We combine two innovative technologies: human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-cardiac cells and microfluidic systems. The Open-TOP microfluidic technology developed in the group of Prof. v.d. Berg from the University of Twente enables the culturing hundreds of culture chambers automatically and consistently, which is key in high throughput screens. This technology will enable the production and culture of 3D cardiac strips in large numbers, bringing 3D vitro models into a high throughput scale. The end users of this technology are pharma companies performing drug discovery activities and CROs providing drug discovery services. For commercialization of 3DCardiacHTS we plan to partner with an end-user and assess their requirements for the use of such high throughput technology, with the intention of securing their partnership at the end of the project In parallel we will discuss the various partnering options with identified potential Pharma partners and/or CROs the best financial deal structure for partnership on 3DCardiacHTS and consequently validate the best business model to pursue the commercialization of 3DCardiacHTS.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementbusiness models
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftwaresoftware applicationssimulation software
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Programme(s)
- HORIZON.3.1 - The European Innovation Council (EIC) Main Programme
Call for proposal
(opens in new window) HORIZON-EIC-2022-TRANSITION-01
See other projects for this callFunding Scheme
HORIZON-EIC - HORIZON EIC GrantsCoordinator
7522 NB Enschede
Netherlands
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.