Pitch 2-2 :Body on a Chip for next stem-cell applications

[Summary]

The researchers from Kyoto University have developed a new technology that could be used to evaluate new drugs and detect possible side effects before the drugs are tested in humans. The technology is called "Body on a Chip" technology. The chip consists of two components, i.e., the IPS cells-induced pluripotent stem cells and the microfluidic environment that establishes the artificial blood flow. The body-on-chip technology was also ranked among the top ten emerging technologies in the World Economic Forum held in 2016.

The primary reason why in-depth research is needed on promoting the chip is that the annual growth rate of this market is at 38%. It has vast applications that can be used in early diagnosis of cancer with biopsy samples and advancement of the pharmacological and toxicological tests. The patients will be benefitted as the chip will enable the detection of effective drugs against the disease. Most importantly, it has proved to be an alternative to animal testing. In addition, a disease model can be established in combination with gene editing technology.

An advantage of this platform is that it can be scaled up or down to accommodate a lot of different configurations, which require a large-scale set-up for mass production of the body on-chip system. Collaborative work is needed for the drug screening and also establishing the contact service for performing the analysis.

[Mentors' comments]

　"How you're going to achieve your competitor advantage over the existing devices. For instance, you said your chip is going to have a much higher throughput over Emulate. What is the core technology piece that makes it possible to achieve that?"Mr. Taiki Ishikura, JOMDD, Inc.

　" I'm very interested in this technique. Maybe you will have the discussion with investors in the future."Mr. Shogo Nakamori, PAREXEL International

[Profile]

Dr. Kamei received his Ph. D. from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2003. He was a Postdoctoral fellow of Molecular Biology Institute and California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California Los Angeles(2003-2010), and Assistant Professor of iCeMS, Kyoto University before his current position.