AIM Biotech, a Singapore- and Boston-based company, announced the launch of the organiX System—a lab tool to closely model human disease by adding vascularization and immune competence to organoids, spheroids, and tumor biopsies.
Adding vascularization and immune cells to a disease model creates a more defined and tunable microenvironment to more closely emulate the complexity of human physiology, they say.
“One of the missing links in organoid research has been the real-world effect of vascularization and immune cells,” said Jim McGorry, CEO of AIM Biotech. “Labs and research teams now have an elegant and simple-to-use tool that closely mimics the complex physiology of human disease in a recognizable and universally used plate that fits into existing workflow. The benefits include making it easier for drug developers to predict which therapies to bring into and through clinical trials and eventually aid healthcare providers in tailoring optimal treatments for patients.”
When applied to organoids and biopsies, conventional tissue culture methods do not simulate the natural human environment of nutrient perfusion and vascularization. This limits critical interactions with other essential cell types typically found in the body. Without a true-to-life microenvironment safety and efficacy data don’t accurately predict human response.
organiX addresses these challenges by allowing the culture of organoids in a vascularized microenvironment with other critical cell types. This creates a more physiologically accurate way to test the effectiveness of new therapies. Human, and patient-specific tissue, could be used to establish dosing and efficacy.
The organiX platform is designed to host human tissue biopsies or organoids of up to 2 mm in diameter. These tissues have the potential to help broaden the assessment of conventional and experimental approaches to cancer treatment. The hope is that researchers may be able to test and co-culture cells in a more physiologically meaningful arrangement to better predict human response and complement genetic data.
McGorry continued, “Instead of just adding drugs to organoids without realistic microenvironments, organiX enables any investigator to easily add functional vasculature and relevant cell types like immune cells to patient-specific tumor biopsies or organoids. The treated biopsies or organoids can be retrieved intact along with the surrounding microenvironment for histological or advanced genomic/proteomic analysis.”
