I am going to give a fairly regular blog on some cool and interesting technologies and companies. I am consulting for these companies, so do reach out to me to learn more.
Aracari Bio (Technology - Aracari Biosciences) are based in Irvine, California. Their specialty technology is vascularized microtissues. These 3 examples, kindly provided by Aracari Bio, demonstrate the technology beautifully.
Vascularized Micro-Organ (VMO™)
Vascularized Micro-Tumor (VMT™)
Vascularized Micro-Brain (VMB™)
The first photograph shows the architecture of the vascular system. The next 2 photos show examples of this vasculature supporting and feeding the cells from a tumor and microbrain.
The drug is introduced through the vascular system, rather than in the media in most in vitro technologies brining this system to a much closer in vivo patient centred way.
Along with small molecule therapies, where they are often developing models to answer mechanistic or investigational toxicology questions, they have been using this system to support the development of Car-T and ADC therapies. They have a useful library of oncology models to support striated medicine and oncology discovery as well as different tissue models, all based around the vascular system. Of course, they can even look at the effect of drugs on the vascular system, for example, vascular leakage.
If you would like to learn more, Ming-I Huang and her colleagues will be presenting a BioInsights webinar on 08 June 2022, see https://www.insights.bio/immuno-oncology-insights/webinars/318/Life-on-a-chip-vascularized-micro-tumor-chips-for-mimicking-clinical-drug-responses.