Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ARON (Assay-Ready Organ Network)
Période du rapport: 2020-01-01 au 2020-06-30
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 $2 billon) as current methods are outdated and too simplistic, not able to correctly recapitulate the human being.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.
This SME Phase 1 ARON project was dedicated to obtain an in depth understanding of the current organ-on-chip (OOC) market, upcoming new developments, present and projected market size and segmentation and insight into the competitive landscape. The aim was to identify a compelling and unique product definition and a corresponding development strategy and to shape a sustainable business model. This was successfully achieved by numerous internal and external workshops, interrogating InSphero’s sales team, field application scientist, interviewing customers from the pharama/biotech industry, ranging from end-user to top management executives and KOLs and regulators, obtaining coaching sessions by experienced industry leaders, attending OOC conferences and becoming steering committee member of the European Organ-on-Chip Society (EUROoC).
According to the developed strategy, InSphero’s stands a good chance to become a leading OOC supplier setting new standards making the technology mature and robust enough to facilitate the implementation into routine and customized applications along the drug discovery and development path. The ARON platform will allow InSphero to grow substantially over the next 7 years, increasing revenues by 150-200% with approx. 50 additional jobs created.