AI-Powered Organ-on-a-Chip Systems with real-time monitoring for Cardiac Microphysiological Reconstruction and Drug Screening

Cardiotoxicity is a major contributor for safety concerns in drug and vaccine development. In this project, we are building a Cardiac Organoid-on-Chip solution to address these problems. Currently, there are limited cardiac organoid related products on the market, whilst organoid technology has been favourably adopted in the biotech industry by pharmaceuticals and likes.

With the expertise from Genenet, VasoDyanmics, and our Taiwanese partners (Darwin, Pythia, Anntong and ITRI), in the fields of cell biology, synthetic biology, machine learning, Organ-on-Chip, etc., we are establishing a real-time monitoring system to observe the effects of drugs on cardiac organoids on a chip, and to use AI-assisted analysis. We will develop an innovative system that uses AI algorithms to process real-time signals to ensure continuous and accurate monitoring of the beating rate, beating amplitude, and changes in biochemical indicators of cardiac organoids.

With advanced auto-control, this system resolves 1) the poor prediction result from the current 2D cell model in drug discovery for toxicity and efficacy; and 2) the lack of an in-line method to monitor the actual cell viability of organoid development in Organ-on-Chip. By developing this organoid-based system, we would provide a new accurate, high-throughput, and user-friendly product for biotech users, be beneficial to the general public by increasing the successful rate of drug development (via reducing the drug failure rate due to cardiotoxicity), reduce the waiting time for new drug candidate screening, and, at the same time, reduce the usage of lab animals.

In this project, we also take advantage of collaborating with VasoDyanmics to test their drug candidate in our new platform. VasoDyanmics has been focusing on drug discovery for antitumor treatment side effects. Chemotherapy induced alopecia (CIA) is a condition that affects 65% of cancer patients.

From a patient's point of view, CIA is the most traumatic aspect of chemotherapy, causing about 8% of patients to refuse to receive chemotherapy (Rossi A et al. 2017). To date, there are no approved drugs to effectively prevent/reduce the anticancer therapy-induced dermatology side effects, including hair-loss. There is a large unmet need to develop safe and effective drugs to improve cancer patients' quality of life sooner.

The success of VasoDyanmics' chemotherapy-related alopecia drug candidate would allow us to further promote our Organoid-on-Chip solution and the need to reduce animal usage in drug discovery.