State-of-the-art laboratories significantly expand project capacity to meet increasing market demand for Organ-on-a-Chip research services

CN Bio, a leading Organ-on-a-chip Company (OOC) that designs and manufactures single-and multi-organ microphysiological systems (MPS), has announced the opening of new laboratory facilities at Cambridge Science Park, dedicated to its contract research services. The Company’s laboratory space has been doubled in response to the increasing market demand for OOC services as the technology gains traction within drug discovery and development programmes.

CN Bio’s contract research services harness the Company’s next-generation MPS technology, a decade of expertise and proven-track record across a growing portfolio of applications including: drug metabolism, safety toxicology, oncology and Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH). Generating actionable data for its customers within weeks, the team collaborate with researchers to create an experimental design that delivers unique human-translatable insights, whilst saving significant time and cost versus animal studies.

The rising demand for services demonstrates acceptance of OOC data by pharma and biotech companies in their therapeutic programmes. This is being fuelled by repeat business, growing interest from regulatory agencies, the technology’s ability to predict clinical outcomes and its potential to replace animal models - especially for the testing of new drug modalities with human-specific modes of action. As the body of evidence demonstrating OOC’s superior performance versus traditional approaches increases, the Company’s expansion ensures it is ready to meet the needs of this growing market.

Dr Gareth Guenigault, Lead Scientist of CN Bio’s Contract Research Services, said: “This expansion is an exciting next step in the progression of our contract research services offering. As we see increasing awareness within the drug discovery, development and regulatory fields that animal models don’t always get it right, nor are ethically desirable, we are poised to offer solutions that fit researchers’ individual needs. By utilising the power of OOC technology to provide early stage, clinically translatable data across a range of applications, we hope to give customers greater confidence in the success of their projects, in a fraction of the time and cost.”

About CN Bio

CN Bio is a leading organ-on-a-chip (OOC) company that offers a portfolio of products and services to optimise the accuracy and efficiency of bringing new medicines to market; providing significant savings in cost and time to drug discovery and development pipelines. With more than a decade of research and development experience in multi-organ microphysiology, CN Bio aims to transform the way human-relevant pre-clinical data is generated through the development of the most complete model of the human “Body-on-a-Chip” in the laboratory.

The Company’s range of lab-benchtop PhysioMimix™ microphysiological systems (MPS) enable researchers to model human biology in the lab through rapid and predictive 3D human tissue-based studies that harness microfluidic technology to provide nutrients and mimic blood flow. The technology bridges the gap between traditional cell culture and human studies, advancing towards the simulation of human biological conditions to support the accelerated and more efficient development of new therapeutics, whilst reducing the dependence on animal model usage.

CN Bio’s MPS support researchers that require reliable, data-rich, in vitro studies, to uncover novel mechanistic insights into a broad range of biological processes across healthy and diseased cell-types, in addition to identifying novel therapeutic targets and investigating drug efficacy, pharmacokinetics and potential toxicity.

The Company’s next-generation OOC assays span a range of organ types, including lung, liver and gut. Single organs can be linked together into multi-organ systems to simulate processes such as drug absorption and metabolism, or to understand interactions between organs, such as inflammation.

Harnessing these assays, its portfolio of MPS, 3D validated cells, compatible consumable plates and research services have been developed to address drug development bottlenecks across a range of therapeutic areas, including metabolic and infectious diseases, oncology, and inflammation.

CN Bio’s technology is developed internally and licensed from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Northeastern University and Vanderbilt University, and has been successfully adopted by numerous pharma and academic partners, including recognition from the US FDA.

CN Bio’s headquarters and laboratories are based in Cambridge, UK, with an international network of distributors.