cloud native microenvironment control for complex biology models

Offentlig prosjektsammendrag

The human body is an incredibly complex machinery made out of individual cells. Researchers around the world are constantly finding new ways how our cells work, why they behave in a certain way, and how this affects e.g. a disease. In order to find novel treatments for a disease, one tries to copy the human patient as accurately as possible in the laboratory, where one can freely test e.g. a novel drug. The problem, however, lies in the accuracy of these models: the failure rate in pharmaceutical developments is ca. 95%, meaning that a lot of time & money is wasted on failures. One way to increase the accuracy of such laboratory experiments is by using so called complex cell models, that consists of thousands of cells. Increasing the complexity tends to bring novel problems - also in this case: living cells are incredibly sensitive to external stimuli, like temperature changes, forces, or deformation. In the human body, these stimuli are automatically taken care of - but in the laboratory, there are currently only very limited possibilities to replicate this so called physiological microenvironment. And that is a massive problem. Thousands of researchers around the world apply their talent on developing such complex cell models, yet lack the tools to control the micronenvironment. And that is the problem we are fixing with this project: Vitroscope is developing a complete system to digitally measure & control the microenvironment of complex cell models. This digitally integrated approach to complex biology allows for optimizing & scaling complex cell models for use in research and pharmaceutical industry.