Organs-on-Chips Centre opens in UK for advancements in medical research and drug development

A new research centre which aims to revolutionise medical research and drug development using microengineered Organs-on-Chips has opened at Queen Mary University of London.

Organs-on-Chips contain tiny hollow channels lined by living human cells that recreate the microenvironment experienced by cells within the human body. As miniaturised living systems with human cells, Organs-on-Chips can predict human response with greater precision and detail than today’s cell culture or animal-based testing, and can be used in a laboratory to test drugs and understand how the body works.

The new ‘Queen Mary – Emulate Organs-on-Chips Centre’ will use Organs-on-Chips to recreate the human biology of different organs by incorporating the appropriate types of cells and tissues cultured under continuous fluid flow and mechanical forces, such as cyclic breathing and peristalsis, which create the microenvironment experience by cells in the body.

Organs-on-Chips research offers the potential to improve the testing of new drugs or therapies to predict their safety and efficacy in the human body. These living, microengineered systems also offer the potential to reduce the reliance on animal testing and enhance understanding of disease mechanisms in the development of new medicines.

Queen Mary has established the Centre in partnership with Emulate, Inc., a U.S.-based company that is on the leading-edge with a portfolio of Organs-on-Chips products and lab-ready systems for use by researchers worldwide.

The Centre will provide access to Emulate’s Organs-on-Chips technology to enable researchers to develop organ models of their design for use in a wide variety of experiments and drug development programmes. It will also provide opportunities for collaboration with Emulate and support for commercialisation and translational impact.

Professor Martin Knight, Director of the new Queen Mary – Emulate Organs-on-Chips Centre said: “The potential for this technology is outstanding, letting us recreate the behaviour of cells, tissues and organs as found in the human body in a way that has not been possible before. This will enable researchers to understand more about disease mechanisms and to test new therapies.

“An individual’s cells can also be populated into one of these Organ-Chips, which makes it possible to see how that individual’s body will respond to a certain treatment such as a specific drug combination, paving the way to a future of personalised medicine.”

The Centre is located in newly refurbished bioengineering labs within Queen Mary’s School of Engineering and Materials Science and includes dedicated Centre staff and an extensive suite of Emulate’s Organs-on-Chips testing platforms. The Centre is also part of a new Centre for Predictive in vitro Models at Queen Mary University of London.

Professor Hazel Screen, Co-Director of the Queen Mary – Emulate Organs-on-Chips Centre, added: “These bioengineered systems can also be used to examine how the body responds to other compounds such as food ingredients, pesticides, or pollutants.”

Emulate’s technology can be configured to recreate a wide range of different organ tissues and disease models. They recreate the body’s dynamic cellular microenvironment, including tissue-to-tissue interfaces, blood flow, immune cell interactions, and mechanical forces.

“Emulate is excited to partner with Queen Mary to make this new Organs-on-Chips Centre accessible to the research community in the UK. This will be the first-of-its-kind research center in the UK and we look forward to collaborating with many of the leading researchers involved in advancements in drug development and industries to accelerate new ways to improve human health,” said Geraldine A. Hamilton, PhD, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Emulate, Inc.

Organs-on-Chips technology is a rapidly expanding field with major pharmaceutical companies now investing in using these systems for drug discovery and development.

Professors Screen and Knight also run the UK’s Organ-on-a-chip Technologies Network which was officially launched in 2018. The network brings together the UK research community, industrial partners, and other stake holders to tackle the major technological questions associated with developing and building new Organs-on-Chips.

The new Queen Mary – Emulate Organs-on-Chips Centre will be used by members of the Network to drive forward innovation and rapid adoption of this new technology

Market forecasts predict that the organ-on-a-chip market can expect a compound annual growth rate of 38-57 percent over the next five years, rapidly becoming a multi-billion dollar market. This new Queen Mary – Emulate Organs-on-Chips Centre is at the forefront of this activity in the UK.

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To find out more about the Queen Mary – Emulate Organs-on-Chips Centre visit the website here: https://www.cpm.qmul.ac.uk/emulate/.

To find out more about the Organ-on-a-chip Technologies Network head to the website here: https://www.organonachip.org.uk/.

Contact

Rupert Marquand

PR Officer

Queen Mary University of London

[email protected]

Tel: 020 7882 3004

For more information about the Queen Mary – Emulate Organs-on-Chips Centre, please contact the Centre Directors:

Professor Martin Knight – [email protected]

Professor Hazel Screen – [email protected]

At Queen Mary University of London, we believe that a diversity of ideas helps us achieve the previously unthinkable.

Throughout our history, we’ve fostered social justice and improved lives through academic excellence. And we continue to live and breathe this spirit today, not because it’s simply ‘the right thing to do’ but for what it helps us achieve and the intellectual brilliance it delivers.

Our reformer heritage informs our conviction that great ideas can and should come from anywhere. It’s an approach that has brought results across the globe, from the communities of east London to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

We continue to embrace diversity of thought and opinion in everything we do, in the belief that when views collide, disciplines interact, and perspectives intersect, truly original thought takes form.

Emulate, Inc. creates living products for understanding how diseases, medicines, chemicals, and foods affect human health. Their Human Emulation System sets a new standard for recreating true-to-life human biology and is being used to advance product innovation, design, and safety across a range of applications including drug development, agriculture, cosmetics, food, and chemical-based consumer products. Emulate continues to develop a wide range of chips and disease models through collaborations with industry partners and internal R&D programs. Emulate is also working with clinical partners to produce chips personalized with an individual patient’s stem cells, for applications in precision medicine and personalized health. Their founding team pioneered the Organs-on-Chips technology at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Emulate holds the worldwide exclusive license from Harvard University to a robust and broad intellectual property portfolio for the Organs-on-Chips technology and related systems.

Find out more on the Emulate website: http://www.emulatebio.com.