COMMERCIALISATION CORNER
These micro titer plates are comprised of up to 96 tissue chambers, each of which can be individually interrogated. Specifically, each chamber can be unique in terms of co-culture and chemical gradient attributes. This allows for the next generation of array products creating unique capabilities: ■ Long term culture and compound exposure on long-living 3D tissues
■ Stable and controlled differentiation of stem cells ■ Complex (co-)culture conditions including multi-organ culturing and air-liquid interfacing
■ Drug response testing on primary patient material.
Like their early small tech based array technologies cousins, these 3D culture platforms are fully compatible with common laboratory and industry standards. Already a range of models have been implemented, including stem cell derived neurons, gut, liver, kidney, pancreas, (micro) vasculature and a range of cancer models (gut, breast, glioma). MIMETAS OrganoPlates and other like technologies can enable 21th century precision and personalised medicine as well as help to identify effective drugs earlier in the process. Figure 1 shows the MIMETAS OrganoPlate with its gel lane in red and a perfusion lane in blue.
The contributors to the MANCEF pharmaceutical landscape have identified over 18 drivers that detail how the pharmaceutical based therapeutics and diagnostics in the 21st century will differ and improve greatly over those offered in the 20th century. Personalised medicine is one of those drivers. 20st century medicines were characterised by blockbuster drugs, based on a ‘one size fits all’-concept, the 21st century will see drugs that are tailored to specific patient subgroups, and precision medicine. The MANCEF Pharmaceutical Landscape also predicts that the single root technology pharmaceutical therapy tradition will move to a much more complex four to five root technology product platform. Products like MIMETAS OrganoPlate are leading this effort. MIMETAS was a winner of a Young Technology award at last year’s COMS conference in Enschede, Netherlands.
<< Figure 1: MIMETAS OrganoPlate gel lane is in red and a perfusion lane is in blue. >>
Dr. Paul Vulto (Dordrecht, 1977) is a scientist and entrepreneur, who held positions in the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Japan. He worked as an engineer for the high-tech company Silicon Biosystems in Bologna and headed the Diagnostic Microsystems group at IMTEK, the University of Freiburg. Paul holds a cum laude Masters degree in Biomedical Engineering and a cum laude PhD degree in Microsystems Engineering. Paul is co-author of 12 international patent applications and over 20 peer reviewed journal publications. He works as group leader at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research on nano and micro fluidics for metabolomics, massive parallel screening and 3D cell & tissue culturing. He is co-founder and CTO of the company MIMETAS that markets organ and tissue models on-a-chip for development of new medicines.
Dr. Steven Walsh is a Distinguished professor at UNM where also holds the Regents professor at UNM’s Anderson School of Management. He also is the Institute Professor for Entrepreneurial Renewal of Industry at the University of Twente. He has received many business service awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award for Commercialization of Micro and Nano Technology Firms from MANCEF. He has also been named as a Tech All Star from the State of New Mexico Economic Development Department and has been recognised by Albuquerque the magazine as a leader in service to the economic community. He is a serial entrepreneur that has helped attract millions of dollars in venture capital to these firms.
48 | commercial micro manufacturing international Vol 7 No.4
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