Category Archives: News

Rapid Prototyping of Organ-on-Chip Devices Using Maskless Photolithography

Dhanesh Kasi and colleagues have developed a cleanroom-free microfabrication procedure for rapid prototyping of Organ-on-Chip and microfluidic devices. Organ-on-Chip (OoC) refers to biomimetic microdevices that contain cell culture compartments and/or microfluidic channels and (human) cells. They may also include integrated sensors for functional measurements, or valves to control fluid flows. Chips are usually produced in cleanroom facilities that contain specialized equipment for microfabrication. A fast and low-threshold method for fabricating simple OoC and microfluidic devices is beneficial to reduce prototyping times, and lowers barriers for labs to perform OoC research. A simplified and cleanroom-free microfabrication procedure by using a digital...

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Pim de Haan defends PhD thesis on gut-on-a-chip work

On Friday, November 19th, 2021 Pim de Haan successfully defended his PhD thesis titled ‘Microfluidic digestive systems for drug analysis’ at the University of Groningen. He conducted his PhD research in the Pharmaceutical Analysis group at the Groningen Research Institute of Pharmacy, with Prof. Sabeth Verpoorte as thesis advisor and dr. Klaus Mathwig as co-adviser. Dr Pim de Haan and Prof Sabeth Verpoorte. His research, which was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), focused on the development of gut-on-a-chip devices for drug and toxicology testing. In collaboration with Wageningen University and a team of industrial partners, a modular system...

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River BioMedics Raises Seed Investment to Progress its Cardiovascular Disease Programs

River BioMedics, a drug discovery company using advanced 3D human cardiac models, announced the seed funding of 1.8 million Euro to progress its pipeline of cardiovascular disease targets and compounds. River BioMedics addresses the high unmet medical need of cardiac diseases with a focus on heart failure. The financing round was co-led by FIRST fund, managed by BioGeneration Ventures (BGV), KIKK Capital and Oost NL. River BioMedics was founded in 2020 by Marcelo Ribeiro, Lisanne Blauw and Robert Passier, as a spin-out from the University of Twente’s department of Applied Stem Cell Technologies. The team has built a suite of...

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Save-the-date: UMD-hDMT seminar on Stem cell models for Metabolic Disorders

Stem cell models offer a promising perspective to study the tissue-specific pathophysiology of Metabolic Disorders and novel treatments. Analysis of metabolites and understanding the metabolism in such models is still a challenge that needs to be solved. In this symposium, we will discuss advances in stem cell models and metabolism and how they can be integrated. Date: April 13th, 2022 Location: Radboudumc Contact person: Dirk.lefeber@radboudumc.nl Depending on the circumstances, the symposium will be live/hybrid or online. More details will follow soon. United for Metabolic Diseases (UMD) is a unique, innovative and multidisciplinary collaboration with the common goal to perform innovative...

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Contribute to the Tumor Lymph Node-on-Chip End Users Questionnaire!

‘Tumor and Lymph Node-on-Chip for cancer studies’ (Tumor-LN-oC) is a Horizon 2020 EU project coordinated by the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS) of the National Technical University of Athens and led by Professor Ioanna Zergioti who is the Principal Investigator. The consortium comprises 11 partners from the Industry and the Academia from 9 different EU countries. Researchers from hDMT are involved in this project as project partner or members of the Scientific Advisory Board. Tumor-LN-oC aims to offer a comprehensive solution for a robust, automated tumor-lymph node-on-chip platform that will connect primary surgically removed human tumors and LN...

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Organ-on-Chip technology at ‘Leiden City of Science’ public event

Young hDMT scientists will present the importance of Organ-on-Chip technology for science and society during a public event in Leiden on 28 May 2022. This event is organized by the NWA route Regenerative Medicine in the context of ‘Leiden as European City of Science’ this year. The public event is the start of the Life Sciences and Health week with many activities in the field of public health and drug development. More information here

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Open technology platforms for emerging medical domains

Last November the Health.E lighthouse released two white papers on open technology platforms for emerging medical domains with Organ-on-Chip of course being one of them. In the first whitepaper emerging medical domains are identified. In the latest whitepaper the specific problems and challenges related to open platforms for medical  devices are discussed.   The lighthouses are an instrument initiated by the European ECSEL/KDT funding program to streamline and focus European initiatives / projects in certain key areas, and one of them is Health. It is the mission of the Health.E lighthouse to accelerate innovation in medical devices by promoting the development and adoption...

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300 million euros for a new international stem cell consortium

Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC), the Danstem Institute at the University of Copenhagen and the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne will jointly receive 300 million euros from the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The aim of this new international consortium is to bring stem cell-based therapies from the laboratory to the patient. Stem cells offer a unique opportunity to repair tissue damaged by disease or trauma. The potential use is promising for the treatment of diabetes, metabolic diseases and inherited disorders, but substantial work is still needed to bring these stem cell therapies to patients. To accelerate this, the Novo Nordisk...

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Emulate Liver-Chip able to correctly identify 87% of drugs that caused drug-induced liver injury to patients

In a recent study now available on BioRxiv, researchers assessed the performance of 780 human Liver-Chips across a blinded set of 27 known hepatotoxic and non-toxic drugs. In line with the IQ MPS guidelines, the tested drugs included seven matched pairs that demonstrate the chip’s ability to distinguish toxic drugs from their less-toxic structural analogs. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that the Emulate Liver-Chip was able to correctly identify 87% of the tested drugs that caused drug-induced liver injury in patients despite passing through animal testing. At the same time, the Liver-Chip did not falsely flag any drugs as toxic, supporting...

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CEN-CENELEC Organ-on-Chip Focus Group Creation

The CEN-CENELEC kick off meeting of the new Focus Group on standardization of Organ-on-Chip will take place as a virtual event on March 2nd 2022. In April, the online workshop ‘Organ on Chip: Towards Standardization’ took place as the 2021 edition of Putting Science into Standards (PSIS) in collaboration with the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The PSIS workshop gathered more than 200 participants from academia, industry, policy makers, regulatory experts, and standardizers. You can find out more about the workshop and the different themes and issues that were discussed over its two-day run in this event report published...

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