InSphero secures an EU grant to advance diversity in 3D in vitro testing

19.11.2024 09:20, Rita Longobardi

Venturelab alumnus InSphero, the global leader in scalable and reliable 3D in vitro cell culture solutions for drug discovery, is leading in the recently awarded Chips JU European UNLOOC Project to advance its technology platform and address diversity in drug efficacy and safety testing.

Launched in May 2024, the Project UNLOOC - Unlocking data content of Organ-on-Chips - brings together 51 organizations in academia, research, and technology companies from 10 European countries. With an overall budget of EUR 68 million, the project receives EUR 14 million in funding from the Chips Joint Undertaking, EUR 3 million from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), and EUR 18 million from national agencies.

The main objective of UNLOOC is to industrialize organ-on-chip systems, with a focus on advanced readouts. This will be achieved by leveraging microfluidics, bioengineering, microelectronics, big data, AI (artificial intelligence), and Key Digital Technologies (KDT) to maximize their impact on drug development and personalized medicine.

InSphero leads the first of five use cases with a budget of roughly EUR 12 million, aiming at developing off-the-shelf 3D in vitro model organ panels reflecting human diversity in race, age, gender, sex etc. Together with their partners, a highly innovative cryopreservation technique will be scaled up to produce 3D in vitro model organ biobanks. In parallel, advanced read-out methods for 3D microscopy, RNA sequencing, lipidomics, and RAMAN spectroscopy will be developed including multi-parametric, multi-model data analysis using the latest AI/ML methods.

This project is supported by the Chips Joint Undertaking (Grant Agreement No. 101140192) and its members including the top-up funding of Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Spain. This work has received funding from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).

InSphero was ranked among the TOP 100 Scale-ups in 2019 and the TOP 100 Swiss Startups from 2011 to 2014, participated in Venture Leaders in 2010 and won the final stage of Venture Kick in 2008.