Organs-on-chip (OOC) are expected to play a crucial role in the pharmaceutical industry for drug development and study of organs and diseases.Combined with recent advances in stem cell technology, OOCs can be used to do drug screening on an individual level. Therefore it can serve as instrument for personalized medicine, by determining the effectiveness of selected compounds, as well as possible side-effects to determine safe drug doses on a person-specific level. Moreover, OOCs will greatly contribute to a further reduction in the need for animal testing. Besides the pharmaceutical industry, OOCs hold great promise for the food and cosmetics industry to test the safety of products.
OOCs need continuous monitoring of the quality of the cell barrier to guarantee reliable outcomes of the drug development tests. State-of-the-art methods, such as fluorescence and commercially available Trans-Endothelial Electrical Resistance (TEER) measurement apparatus are discontinuous, inaccurate and/or harmful for the cells and therefore unsuitable for pharmaceutical applications. Our innovation overcomes these disadvantages. It enables continuous quality monitoring of the barrier function of the organ, which is essential for the commercialization of Organs-on-Chip. During the BioRead project the team took the development of the detector one step further, by improving the user-friendliness and sensitivity for specific conditions.
A thorough business plan was written and during the project several lead-users were involved. User-interviews supported the design and implementation of the graphical user-interface. As a result of the project, the company LocSense has the intention to further commercialize the detector.
