SaferWorldbyDesign Webinar: Multi-Organ-Chips in Safety and Efficacy Testing: Towards Next Generation Risk Assessment

In recent years, microphysiological systems have proven to be a powerful tool for mimicking human tissue- and organ-like functions at research level, providing the basis for the establishment of qualified preclinical and toxicity assays with improved predictive power. However, industrial and regulatory adoption of microphysiological systems and respective assays are challenging due to their complexity. 

In order to emulate the physiologically relevant crosstalk with the ability to perform systemic substance testing, we have developed a universal Multi-Organ-Chip platform for long-term culture of human organ equivalents interconnected within a common capillary microfluidic network. Several combinations of organs have been performed on this platform (e.g. a combination of liver equivalents with skin, intestine, or pancreatic islets). In addition, we developed a Four-Organ-Chip (Chip4) platform for ADME profiling, systemic multi-organ toxicity evaluation, and risk assessment at repeated dose substance exposures. The physiology-based chip design supports human-like connection of a functional intestinal barrier model with a liver model, a 3D neuronal model, and a kidney barrier equivalent. 

Standardization of microphysiological systems will be the next step to adopt them into a higher tier test battery for targeted testing, pharmacokinetic predictions and in vitro in vivo extrapolation for human-relevant, hypothesis-driven risk assessment. 

Presenter: Beren Atac Wagegg (Senior Scientist, TissUse GmbH)

Dr. Beren Atac Wagegg is a Senior Scientist and Project Manager at TissUse GmbH. She holds a Ph.D. in Medical Biotechnology from the TU Berlin, Germany. She is an expert in tissue engineering and the development of new multi-organ-chips-based prototypes for numerous applications and worked on establishing various chip-based assays. She coordinates various projects, aiming for standardized chip-based assays. Beren Atac Wagegg joined TissUse in 2010, a company that has developed the Multi-Organ-Chip platforms. It is dedicated to advance the preclinical insight on the systemic level using human tissue to predict toxicity, ADME profiles, and efficacy in vitro, to reduce and replace laboratory animal testing.