CN Bio develops a suite of benchtop single-and multi-organ microphysiological systems (MPS) called PhysioMimix that can model human tissue systems in a more complex way than regular cell cultures in the lab. The company uses microfluidics to nourish the tissue models and to simulate blood flow between organs.
A drawback of OOC systems that CN Bio and LifeNet Health are aiming to overcome is that cell cultures often need to undergo validation steps to check that they can be used in OOCs, which can be costly and time-intensive. And according to CN Bio’s release, more than 60% of liver cell lots from a range of suppliers over a 5-year period didn’t meet the criteria for use in MPS assays.
To tackle this obstacle, LifeNet Health supplies donated human cells that are already validated for use in OOC systems, which can let customers carry out more reproducible and reliable assays.
According to the agreement, LifeNet Health’s validated liver cells will be available in CN Bio’s PhysioMimix range for studying non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Specifically, CN Bio will select hepatocyte, stellate, and Kupffer cells that can maintain their function and phenotype for at least two weeks in 3D MPS culture. The cells can also be bought from LifeNet Health directly.
“LifeNet Health and CN Bio share a commitment to helping researchers bring safer, more effective therapies to patients sooner, with no unnecessary animal testing,” said Tomasz Kostrzewski, chief scientific officer at CN Bio, in a public statement. “In our studies, LifeNet Health’s cells have consistently shown high success rates, and we are confident this will lead to more reliable, reproducible results.”
The global market for OOCs is forecast to grow by around 34.1% between 2022 and 2030, according to Orion Market Research. It noted increasing mergers and acquisitions and pharma partnerships driving the growth of the space, with one key example being a partnership between Yokogawa Electric Corp and the OOC provider InSphero AG in 2020.
More recently, the big pharma company Astellas expanded an ongoing partnership with the OOC firm Mimetas to improve its assays with automation and application support.
