Press release: UNLOOC mitigates the use of animal testing in drug development by designing groundbreaking Organ-on-Chips technologies
14.5.2024, Jena, Germany - The EU project UNLOOC (Unlocking the data content of Organ-on-Chips) has just been launched on 14th of May 2024 in Jena. The three-year project consortium, funded by Chips Joint Undertaking and national agencies, aims to develop groundbreaking Organ-on-Chips (OOC) technologies to mitigate the challenges posed by use of animals in drug development and testing. Direct use of human cells is a real game changer, bridging the gender gap and allowing personalized medicine.
Challenges and ethical implications of animal testing in drug development
Before drugs can proceed to clinical trials on human subjects, animal models have traditionally been used to validate the effectiveness, toxicity and pharmacokinetics of the drug. However, use of animal models comes with many potential challenges, such as low translational probability to humans, high failure rates in clinical trials, excessive costs in drug development, and risk of death caused by unwanted side effects in approved drugs.
To mitigate these severe risks in drug development, better methods to test drugs on human models or corresponding target groups are needed. As an ethical implication, the potential suffering of the estimated 100 million animals currently used for drug experiments should also be avoided.
UNLOOC brings together 51 organisations in 10 countries
The European UNLOOC project (Unlocking data content of Organ-on-Chips) tackles the challenge inherent in animal testing of drugs, bringing together 51 organisations in academia, research and technology companies from 10 European countries. The project with an overall budget of roughly €70 million receives €14 million in funding from the Chips Joint Undertaking and €18 million from national agencies to demonstrate through its five novel use cases how the groundbreaking methods using Organ-on-a-Chip (OOC) technology enable the development of more effective treatments, leaving animal subjects out of the equation. The OOC technology to be developed in the UNLOOC project will not only enable controlled drug testing, but also the modelling of disease pathophysiology.
The UNLOOC use cases will focus on:
Off-the-shelf 3D organ models replicating human diversity by using a highly innovative cryopreservation method.
Developing market-ready single-organ and multi-organ smart OOC multi-well plates.
Designing artificial epithelium to assess transdermal drug delivery, skin penetration, absorbance, and toxicity validated in a toxicity and drug delivery scenario.
Designing a blood brain barrier platform that is affordable for biomedical research labs and scalable for contract research organisations (CROs).
Developing an advanced lung-on-a-chip platform to better assess the safety of new drug candidates.
OOC is a rapidly advancing technology aiming to replicate the physiological and functional properties of human organs on a microstructured platform. OOC systems consist of microfluidic channels lined with living cells that mimic the structures and functions of specific organs. By emulating the microenvironment of organs, OOCs provide a powerful tool for drug development, disease modelling and personalised medicine.
A game changer in the development of Organ-on-Chips technologies
The UNLOOC project consortium is coordinated by Dr. Claudia Gärtner, CEO at microfluidic ChipShop. She explains: “A key argument for using OOC systems is the direct use of human cells, which means that the effect of substances on the real target can be evaluated. In addition, cells from target groups or even individual patients can be implemented in such systems, and the combination with induced pluripotent stem cells can be easily achieved.” She continues: “Keeping in mind that most clinical studies involve healthy male test persons, our approach is a real game changer by bridging the gender gap and introducing experiments for drugs meant for infants.” The outcomes of the UNLOOC project will provide tools not only for testing of new drug candidates but also for setting up disease models to develop therapies in a relevant and controlled environment.
The applications developed and validated in the project will be used by scientists in both academia and pharma companies to drive more comprehensive drug development, create safe cosmetics without animal testing, and gain new insights into diseases. Given the large OOC market and its large projected growth, these solutions are of great economic value and will place Europe at the forefront of this booming research field.
UNLOOC merges microfluidics, biological application, microelectronics, AI (artificial intelligence) and Key Digital Technologies (KDT) to form future products and novel pathways in drug development. The importance of this topic for the European competitiveness was stressed during the kick-off meeting, where the Thuringian Minister of Economy, Sciences and Digital Society, Wolfgang Tiefensee, congratulated the UNLOOC team. For Minister Tiefensee, it was a particular pleasure to join this kick-off as with microfluidic ChipShop, the coordinator comes from Thuringia.
A challenging project and almost 100 leading scientists in the field in Jena make us curious about the results in 3 years. Numerous new products and publications as well as a spin-off are planned. The bar is set high.
Funded by the European Union and the national funding authorities of the participating countries. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Chips JU and the respective funding bodies. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.