As is well known, new drug research and development generally faces long research and development cycles The problem of large investment and high failure rate of clinical trials. One of the main reasons is that the preclinical trial data of new drugs is not accurate enough to timely screen out potential problems of new drugs

It is understood that, Currently, preclinical trials in the industry mostly use 2D cell models and animal models to observe the actual effects or potential side effects of new drugs. But the problem is that the physiological function of the 2D cell model is incomplete and cannot reflect the interactions between tissues and the mechanisms of drug occurrence under physiological conditions; There are species differences between animals and humans, making it difficult to accurately simulate human systems, which can lead to inaccurate experimental results

New drug development urgently needs a more precise Organ chip is one of the drug screening technologies that can better reflect the physiological mechanism. It can restore the key parts and functions of human organ through reverse engineering, and can restore the model of human organ to a great extent

36 KryptonThe "Big Rubber Technology" recently contacted is a technology enterprise that independently develops and produces human organ chips. It focuses on promoting the wide application of organ chips in new drug research and development, personalized medicine and other fields, and provides more accurate, efficient and economical drug research and development and precision drug use solutions for the industry. It obtained a million yuan angel round financing led by WuXi KangDe in November 2019, with JiuYou Capital and FuRong Investment co investing

According to Zhou Yu, CEO of Da Xiang Technology, currently, The company has made breakthrough progress and officially launched three commercially available "organ chip" products, including liver model for drug hepatotoxicity test, tumor model for anti-tumor drug development, and blood brain barrier model for brain disease drug development. He stated that this is also the first batch of commercial organ chip products in China

About Organ Chip Technology, It mainly uses microfluidic technology to control fluid flow, and combines cell cell interaction, matrix characteristics, biochemical and biomechanical characteristics to build a three-dimensional physiological micro system of human organ on the chip. It is reported that microfluidic chip systems can control the diameter of micro tissue organs at the millimeter or even micrometer level, enhance their nutrient exchange, and prevent the death of core cells in micro tissue organs

"Big Oak Technology" Through the combination of biological tissue engineering and microfluidic technology, a three-dimensional physiological microsystem of human organ was built on the chip, which contains the key elements of organ "microenvironment" such as living cells, tissue interfaces, biological fluids, mechanical forces, etc., and can reproduce the structure and functional characteristics of human organs in vitro. Zhou Yu stated that based on this biomimetic organ chip model, preclinical trials of new drugs can obtain accurate data, while shortening trial time and reducing the risk of new drug development failure

It is worth mentioning that, Daxiang Science and Technology's organ chip products have now realized the leap from 2D to 3D (building 3D human organ physiological microsystems around the core test cells). That is, it controls the chip channel at the micron level through micro processing technology, which not only makes the micro organ and its microenvironment closer to the real human environment, but also greatly saves test consumables. Zhou Yu introduced that the reduction in consumables also means that Da Xiang Technology can apply expensive but more sensitive human primary cells to the model, while maintaining a lower overall cost

Taking the liver model launched by Da Xiang Technology as an example, We used human primary liver cells, which are cells isolated from human liver tissue. This model can be tested for drug addition after 1 day of liver cell culture, and can still maintain excellent activity after 28 days of cultivation. It can be used for both acute and chronic toxicity tests of the liver, which is an effect that traditional cell models cannot achieve

Currently, China is in a golden period of development for innovative drugs, As a technology that can reflect the key physiological characteristics of the human organ micro physiological system and can accurately and stably obtain preclinical test data, "organ chip" will undoubtedly have broad prospects for development