All pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetic products have to undergo rigorous toxicity testing before going to market. In the past, this was often done through testing with animal models, but this approach has been in rapid decline in part due to high costs, but also because the EU has banned the use of animals for testing cosmetic products. This has driven a demand for in vitro toxicology testing in which the tests are conducted in model systems rather than in animals. The market for in vitro toxicology testing is estimated to reach $17 billion by 2018 (Research and Markets.com). The largest sector of this market is pharmaceutical testing.
An important part of the toxicology market is testing of products for toxicity against mammalian cells in multi-well plates. This technique is very important in the pharmaceutical industry where early detection of drug toxicity can save substantial quantities of money and time, thus reducing the cost of bringing drugs to market. Many drugs fail due to toxic effects on the heart and liver, hence testing against cardiomyocytes (heart) and hepatocytes (liver) are critically important. However, these cells are notoriously difficult to cryopreserve in multi-well plates. At present these cells have to be shipped globally in a fresh format, presenting major logistical challenges, and then used within days, often with less than ideal results in terms of cell uniformity and test reproducibility.
In CryoProtect, my team have made progress to the commercially valuable objective of cryopreserving cells in multiwell plates. Cells preserved in this way can be shipped to laboratories around the world and thawed only when they are needed. This represents a huge commercial advantage. We have worked closely with a company, Asymptote Ltd, and have established a protocol for the freezing and melting of cells in multiwell plates using bespoke Ammonium based cryoprotectants and encapsulated feldspar. We have proof of principle data which we are using in partnership with Asymptote to market the bespoke cryoprotectant and feldspar to third party customers on a licence basis. In addition, we have protected the relevant IP with a new patent and have a paper in peer review on this subject in a high impact journal.
