Development of a Meso-Fluidic System for Co-Culturing Immune Cells and 3D Human Tumor Tissues Using Patented MIVO® Organ-on-Chip Technology

We are pleased to announce that our project has received support from the FESR 2021-2027 funds. Below is a detailed description of our project, its objectives, results, and the support received from the EU.

Project Overview
Our project focuses on the design and development of a meso-fluidic system for co-culturing immune cells and 3D human tumor tissues. This system is based on the patented MIVO® technology. The primary goal is to enhance our company’s innovation capacity by developing a new organ-on-chip platform for oncology and immuno-oncology, a rapidly emerging field in the pharmaceutical industry.

The new product line, MIVO-HTS, targets immuno-oncology applications. It enables a significant number of experimental replications on the same organ-on-chip platform, simultaneously cultivating circulating immune cells and tumor cells in matrices. This allows for testing new immunomodulators and investigating the complex interactions between these cell populations. The project aims to reduce system sizes and increase productivity through a scalable industrial approach.

The project is built on the MIVO® technology, which uses commercially available components for flexibility and integration with other lab equipment. The system’s optimization aims to make it more space-efficient, meeting the needs of pharmaceutical companies requiring simultaneous use of multiple instruments.

Advantages Over Current Technologies
MIVO-HTS addresses the limitations of current organ-on-chip platforms by combining three essential requirements into one solution: compatibility with 3D tissues, control of fluid flow mimicking in vivo conditions, and management of a high number of experimental replications. This enables pharmaceutical companies to study the complex biology of human cells in vitro, particularly the interaction between tumor and immune cells, leading to more predictive preclinical drug and therapy selections compared to current animal models.

The Need
The motivation behind this development stems from the need for more realistic in vitro disease models. Traditional 2D cell cultures fail to replicate in vivo cellular interactions and drug diffusion accurately, while animal models often do not represent human biology, limiting their predictive capacity in preclinical phases. Immuno-oncology animal models are also very costly. Current statistics show that around 80% of drugs fail clinical trials, taking an average of 12 years and costing about one billion dollars per drug. This high failure rate is mainly due to the selection of inappropriate substances during the preclinical phase.

The 3R Principle
The MIVO-HTS project aligns with the 3R principle (replace, reduce, refine), promoting alternative methods like in vitro models (e.g., organ-on-chip) that provide more predictive results than animal studies and reduce the need for animal testing. MIVO-HTS overcomes the limitations of current in vitro preclinical tests, ensuring greater reliability and accuracy of results, and fostering more ethical and effective scientific research.

Project Goals
The project’s goal is to develop an innovative organ-on-chip platform, MIVO-HTS, based on the co-culture of circulating human immune cells with 3D tumor models for high-throughput drug screening. This platform will enable the cultivation of various tumor tissues within the chip, including those derived from patient cell samples, ensuring high productivity and validating performance for intended final uses.