Roche and Takeda to invest in organ-chip development
The pharmaceutical giants will join forces with Emulate to test organoid technology for drug development.
Banner image: Emulate’s S-1 Organ-Chip technology. Image credit: Emulate, Inc.
Roche (Basel, Switzerland) and Takeda (London, UK) have announced plans to invest into organoid drug testing technology via a partnership with organ-chip manufacturer, Emulate (MA, USA).
The Human Emulation System organoids, developed by Emulate, a branch of the Wyss Institute (MA, USA), are designed to recreate cellular environments as experienced by cells within the human body, including mechanisms to imitate the process of breathing.
Roche and Takeda are planning to test Emulate’s Human Emulation System across several research programs during a 3 year partnership, aiming to identify novel classes of therapeutic antibodies and drug treatments.
Another major objective of the partnership is to utilize patient-derived cells to test how patients may respond to particular treatments, in an attempt to increase personalized approaches to medical research.
Initial studies will focus on Emulate’s “Lung-Chip” and “Brain-Chip”, eventually progressing into other organoids, with Takeda especially hoping to secure the “Intestine-Chip” for gastrointestinal disease research.
“We are thrilled to establish this partnership with Roche, with the goal of changing the way drug discovery and development is done – from early discovery, all the way to the clinic,” Geraldine Hamilton, Chief Scientific Officer of Emulate, remarked. “As we produce more human-relevant data with our Organ-Chips, we look forward to making a positive impact on informing R&D decisions, reducing drug candidate attrition in human clinical trials, and helping to deliver better and safer medicines to patients.”