Six-year collaboration recognised at prestigious awards ceremony for its continued success in advancing OOC research to support widespread adoption across the pharmaceutical industry

CN Bio, a leading Organ-on-a-Chip (OOC) company that designs and manufactures single-and multi-organ microphysiological systems (MPS), has received the ‘Most Impactful Industry Collaboration of the Year’ at the 2023 OBN Awards. The award recognises the ongoing success of the Company’s collaboration with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), aimed at advancing OOC adoption through evaluation of its PhysioMimix® OOC range of MPS across a series of applications in drug discovery and development.

Around 90% of drug candidates reaching clinical trials fail, often due to poor clinical translatability between conventional animal models and humans. Coupled with increasing awareness around ethical considerations and the increasing cost of animal studies, there is growing interest in New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), such as OOC, to provide effective, predictive preclinical models. Recent ground-breaking legislature, including the US Government’s FDA Modernization Act and similar acts from the Canadian Government have supported this.

However, a lack of published data demonstrating OOC technology in comparison to other, long established preclinical models has impacted its widespread adoption into drug discovery and development programmes. To overcome these challenges, in 2017, the FDA selected CN Bio as a collaborative partner, to harness its 14+ years OOC expertise in a ground-breaking research partnership aimed at evaluating the accuracy and reproducibility of MPS relative to standard practices. The successful study led to the publication of the first co-authored, peer-reviewed article between an MPS provider and a regulator, and general recommendations for the use of liver MPS technology during drug discovery workflows. Since then, the breadth and scope of the study has been expanded twice to investigate additional models for increasingly complex studies that aim to better inform decision-making at an earlier stage of drug discovery, gain deeper mechanistic insights to refine in vivo study assay design and reduce requirements for animal models. Further publications are anticipated.

The OBN Awards, now in their 15th year, are a highly regarded and sought-after awards programme for the Life Sciences industry, designed to celebrate innovation and outstanding achievement across all corners of the industry. Sponsored by Mills & Reeve, the award for ‘Most Impactful Industry Collaboration of the Year’ recognises companies that have successfully engaged in partnerships that have shown a dynamic impact on R&D which stands to benefit patients.

Dr. Tomasz Kostrzewski, Chief Scientific Officer, commented: “It is a huge honour to have received Most Impactful Industry Collaboration of the Year at this year’s OBN Awards. By working closely with the FDA, our aim is to highlight the impact that this research could have on the global NAM market.” He added: “The data so far further asserts the utility of our OOC technology to provide accurate and reproducible data, encouraging MPS adoption into drug discovery and development workflows, positioning the technology as a viable alternative to animal models, where suited. Taken together, the collaboration’s ever-growing scope is helping to pave the way for global regulatory bodies to rewrite legislature around animal testing requirements, and open up possibilities for accurate, human-relevant preclinical models that can bring more effective treatments to patients who need them.”

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 PhysioMimix™ OOC range of lab-benchtop 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 headquarters and laboratories are based in Cambridge, UK, with an international network of distributors.