Descrizione del progetto
Una nuova era nello screening farmacologico
Nonostante sia agli albori, la microfluidica ha il potenziale per diventare una tecnologia diffusa con numerose applicazioni biomediche. Il progetto COMMiT, finanziato dall’UE, propone di sfruttare la microfluidica per lo screening ad alto rendimento di grandi pannelli di farmaci. Utilizzando la tecnologia proprietaria FFTC (Free-Flow Textile Chips, chip tessili a flusso libero), gli scienziati hanno il potenziale per produrre sferoidi di cellule 3D incapsulati all’interno di goccioline di nanolitri da una singola biopsia tumorale. La piattaforma di microfluidica può essere utilizzata per produrre modelli personalizzati basati su cellule, in sostituzione della sperimentazione animale. La tecnologia FFTC dovrebbe favorire lo sviluppo di farmaci nell’industria farmaceutica e supportare la medicina di precisione.
Obiettivo
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.
Campo scientifico
- 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
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-POC - Proof of Concept GrantIstituzione ospitante
75794 Paris
Francia