Description du projet
Une nouvelle ère dans le criblage des médicaments
Bien que balbutiante, la technologie des microfluides a un potentiel de développement qui pourrait s’étendre à de nombreuses applications biomédicales. Le projet COMMiT, financé par l’UE, propose d’exploiter la microfluidique pour le criblage à haut débit de grands panels de médicaments. À l’aide de la technologie brevetée de «puces textiles à écoulement libre» (FFTC pour «free flow textile chips»), les scientifiques ont le potentiel de produire des sphéroïdes cellulaires 3D encapsulés dans des gouttelettes à l’échelle du nanolitre à partir d’une seule biopsie tumorale. La plateforme microfluidique peut être utilisée pour produire des modèles personnalisés à base de cellules pour les substituer aux tests sur les animaux. La technologie FFTC devrait contribuer au développement de médicaments dans l’industrie pharmaceutique et soutenir la médecine de précision.
Objectif
The development of precision and personalized medicine, notably in cancer, leads to an explosion in the cost of research, clinical trials, diagnosis and treatment. It calls for a change of paradigm in cell-based personalized models, allowing-high throughput screening of large panels of drugs at low cost and on minute samples. We invented in ERCadg CellO a new technology “Free-Flow Textile Chips” (FFTC) proving a solution to the above problem. It allows the production of high-resolution complex microfluidic devices at very low cost using the power of the textile industry. Using this technology we developed an automated platform able to generate, from a single micro-biopsy, a large number of 3D tumor cell spheroids encapsulated within individual nanoliter droplets, and to screen them against tens of drug combinations. This platform will reduce the time, sample size, cost of screening and drugs consumption per assay by factors ranging from 10 to 1000. This will in turn replace animal testing, and allow low-cost high-content drug screening and affordable precision medicine. This new platform will be tested versus conventional techniques in a real world context, and steps towards industrialization will be taken. We shall first target the market of research laboratories and drug development in the pharmaceutical industry, but also prepare clinical applications to the personalization of anticancer treatments. Beyond this, FFTC represents a major breakthrough in microfluidics, a technological field that is currently revolutionizing biology and medicine. Currently its democratization and societal impact are limited by fabrication costs. FFTC will overcome this barrier. COMMiT will thus pave the route to a wide range of other applications, such as “point-of-care” devices or “organs-on-chip” to replace animal testing.
Champ scientifique
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacydrug discovery
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesclassical mechanicsfluid mechanicsmicrofluidics
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringtextiles
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncology
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespersonalized medicine
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-POC - Proof of Concept GrantInstitution d’accueil
75794 Paris
France