This current Corona crisis has ruthlessly exposed Europe’s challenges to counteract arising diseases in a timely, efficiently and safe manner. A regular development process for a single medicine is a long (15 years) and costly (> $2 billon) as current methods are outdated and too simplistic, not able to correctly recapitulate the human being. Pharma and Biotech industry requires a fast track approach to bring effective and safe drugs to the market but yet at an affordable price. Pharma has recognized that the efficacy and toxicity of compounds – the two main reasons why drugs have to be abandoned - can be better predicted by using more physiological pre-clinical in-vitro assays. However, current available systems are very complex and pose serious challenges on their usability, robustness and routine implementation. InSphero is about to set new standards by offering a multi-organ in vitro testing platform (assay-ready organ network = ARON) deployable at various phases along the drug development pipeline as they a) mimic complex biological processes, b) come as “plug-and-play” solutions adhering to industrial lab standards for low and high throughput applications, c) are easy to handle and d) can be customized according to the user needs. For the first time, the industry has access to a turnkey solution of a highly advanced in vitro platform to study compound effects in a relevant physiological environment. Such systems will also allow to cut down on pre-clinical in vivo testing obliging to a growing societal desire to reduce animal testing in the cosmetics, pharma and chemical industry.
