Industry: Manufacturing Region: Germany Transaction price: US$ 1 million Transaction method: equity investment
Project introduction:
Driven by the progress of human stem cell biology, tissue engineering and materials science, tissue engineering has made exciting progress in the past two decades. However, preclinical drug or poison screening still relies on cell culture or animal experiments with poor predictive ability. Scientists at the University of Gö ttingen in Germany have developed a new device for automatic and reliable tissue engineering and drug testing.
Industry status
Bringing a new drug to market may cost billions of dollars, and it is a time-consuming and expensive process, including animal testing before human trials, which is the most expensive and difficult part. However, many promising compounds will fail in human trials. In fact, they may be ineffective or even harmful. Tissue engineering products (TEP), as a substitute for cell experiments and even animal experiments, have aroused great interest. However, despite the recent advantages of stem cell-based tissue engineering, the demand for reliable equipment for TEPs growth and automatic analysis for drug or poison screening is still unsatisfied. At present, video-based systems need a large number of data sets to store and analyze. In addition, for contractile tissues such as the heart, it is best to measure isometric contraction and contractile acceleration, as well as different "preload" forces without changing the system.
Innovative solutions
Scientists at the University of Gö ttingen in Germany have developed an expandable device for culturing tissues and observing tissue contraction. Although the overall design is simple and the cost is low, it can measure the characteristics of engineering tissue structures (TEP) with high accuracy under various conditions. The system can reduce the workload and cost related to this process, and reduce the number of animal experiments needed to test and verify future drugs.
The new equipment is very versatile and does not rely on a microscope or video recording system to monitor TEP. Instead, it uses a photoelectric system to monitor the position of the two pillars of the growth of tissue constructs. The light coupled into the pillars and emitted from the lower end is a pointer, which can directly indicate the actual position of each lower-end pillar. Because of the large number of photons, the position of each lower-end pillar can be determined with high accuracy using a relatively simple sensor. However, because the bottom of the culture chamber is transparent, the tissue attached to the column can be imaged microscopically with high spatial resolution when the column shrinks.
The piezoelectric bending sensor is connected to the elastic column to change its hardness and/or position. For example, the bending sensor can be controlled by optical coupling at the lower end of each strut. By fixing the lower end of the column at a specific position and applying different forces to the tissues attached to the column, the infinite stiffness or hardness of the corresponding column can be simulated.
superiority
● Cultivate and analyze tissue engineering products (TEP) in one instrument.
● No need to transfer tissue engineering products for analysis, which means lower pollution risk.
● Extensible culture platform can realize complete automation.
● Simple and fully integrated photoelectric detection system
● It has different force generation and detection modes and is widely used.
● The box can be imaged microscopically.
app; application
Pre-clinical drug or toxicology screening to replace animal testing;
● Strengthen laboratory research-The new system allows scientists to simulate the mechanical conditions faced by various living tissues in serious cases such as cardiovascular disease or muscle atrophy.
Cooperation mode:
The new equipment of this technology has been successfully tested in laboratory-scale stem cell human heart tissue.