Developing a new drug is extraordinarily costly and slow, with average investments of around two billion euros per approved compound. One key reason is that promising drug candidates often fail late in the process—during animal experiments or clinical trials—because existing testing approaches cannot faithfully predict how a compound will affect real human tissues. Conventional two-dimensional cell cultures lack physiological relevance, and while modern three-dimensional (3D) tissue models offer a major improvement, the field still lacks fast, automated, and quantitative ways to evaluate whether a drug alters the functional properties of these tissues. This gap is especially critical for organs such as heart, skeletal muscle, skin, and brain, whose healthy function fundamentally depends on their mechanical integrity.
Our project addresses this unmet need by developing TissMec, a new technology that enables fully automated cultivation, stimulation, and mechanical characterization of human 3D tissues. TissMec builds on an earlier generation of tissue-growth chambers developed under the ERC Consolidator Grant PolarizeMe, which already enable scalable growth and imaging of human muscle tissue. However, current systems cannot measure essential physical tissue functions—such as force generation, stiffness, or viscosity—and they require manual imaging steps that make high-throughput screening impractical.
TissMec introduces a breakthrough solution: a compact, scalable chamber that combines optical fiber–based force detection, piezoelectric actuation, and direct optical access for high-resolution microscopy. This integrated platform allows drug candidates to be tested on human-derived tissues while automatically quantifying how they affect tissue mechanics—an essential marker for safety and efficacy that is currently inaccessible in high-throughput formats. In contrast to existing commercial systems, TissMec can stimulate tissues electrically, apply defined mechanical loads, mimic pathological mechanical environments (such as heart failure or fibrosis), and read out tissue mechanics without requiring a microscope. The system is designed to be compatible with standard multi-well formats, enabling direct integration into widely used industrial screening pipelines.
The expected impact is substantial. By providing early, reliable, and fully automated tests on human tissue, TissMec has the potential to dramatically reduce the number of ineffective or harmful compounds entering animal experiments or clinical trials—thereby lowering development costs, reducing animal use, and accelerating innovation in drug discovery. The technology is relevant not only for pharmaceutical companies but also for academic researchers and chemical safety testing, particularly as European and US policy increasingly encourages alternatives to animal-based testing.
In summary, TissMec introduces a transformative approach to functional 3D tissue screening. By merging tissue engineering, precision mechanics, and automated optical measurement in a single scalable platform, the project aims to make high-content mechanobiological screening accessible, reliable, and cost-effective. The anticipated impact spans faster therapeutic development, reduced reliance on animal models, and improved safety assessment for a broad range of compounds—ultimately benefiting science, industry, and society as a whole.
