Project description
Innovative platform to investigate polypharmacy in individual patients
Polypharmacy is the effects of the drug mixture combinations on the human body in cases of prescriptions to chronically sick and elderly patients. Polypharmacy is a major issue in the aging population due to unknown interactions of the prescribed multiple drugs. The EU-funded DeLIVERY project aims to develop a new technology to investigate polypharmacy effects on individual patients. DeLIVERY will create an integrated microphysiological system (MPS) culture and microscopic imaging platform for the maintaining and long-term imaging of patient-specific liver cells in their microenvironment during treatment. Using the MPS platform, healthcare providers and biomedical researchers will be able to determine the individual response of tissue samples to a combination of multiple drugs.
Objective
DeLIVERY aims to build a radically new technology for personalized health care, which provides, for the first time, the possibility to investigate polypharmacy on individual patients. Polypharmacy is the effect that the many combinations and permutations of drug mixtures which are typically prescribed to the chronically sick or the elderly population (e.g. painkillers, beta blockers, blood thinners, anti-depressants, and statins) have on the human body. Polypharmacy is becoming a major issue in the ageing population, as well over 10% of hospital admissions for people over 60 years of age are due to currently unknown interactions of the multiple drugs being prescribed by the specialized physicians and general practitioners routinely visited by the elderly. Currently, no single platform exists that can be utilized in a highly parallelized fashion to monitor such effects at the cellular and tissue level. DeLIVERY will provide an integrated microphysiological system (MPS) culture and microscopic imaging platform specifically for the purpose of maintaining, treating and long-term imaging of patient-specific cells within their microenvironment. This MPS platform will allow physicians, biomedical scientists, and researchers to determine the individual response of human tissue biopsies to a combination of multiple drugs. DeLIVERY will enable individualized treatment options providing essential tools towards a better quality of life for older people by allowing improved personalized healthcare. Novel medicines with the potential to reverse the effects of ageing and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) will be tested within typical polypharmacy contexts to determine possible interactions, and the DeLIVERY MPS system will be the purpose-built platform to provide this service. Such a system also requires a paradigm shift in microscopy - away from the single, bulky instrument providing one imaging modality towards compact and modular, yet still high-end, devices.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-EIC - HORIZON EIC GrantsCoordinator
33615 Bielefeld
Germany