Advanced Tissue Engineering for In Vitro Drug Safety and Toxicology Testing
The FDA Modernization Act 2.0, signed into law by President Biden in December 2022, encourages the use of alternatives to animal testing for drug discovery. Cell-based assays are one important alternative; however, they are currently not fit for purpose. The use of 3D, tissue-engineered models represents a key development opportunity to enable development of models of human tissues and organs. However, much remains to be done in terms of understanding the materials, both bioderived and synthetic that can be incorporated into the models, to provide structural support and also functional readouts. In this talk, I will discuss our work developing organic electronic devices to interface with models of human tissues, focusing on generation of biomimetic structures that are minimally invasive to the system being recorded. In particular, I will focus on monitoring of epithelial and endothelial barriers, for example, the lung, the gut and the blood brain barrier. I’ll show how we’ve used tissue-inspired scaffolds to monitor host-pathogen and host-microbiome interactions. Our focus on electrical monitoring yields high-content, continuous recordings, with cell "signatures" beginning to emerge that will greatly facilitate the acceptance of electrical recordings of tissue function alongside traditional microscopy and biochemical assays. Zooming into the cell membrane, I’ll also highlight our work using native cell membranes to monitor virus interactions, as well as ion channel activity, including from primary neurons. In summary, our work aims to provide a suite of in vitro assays that can inform those who study disease and develop new therapies.