Cell Metabolism

Cell Metabolism

On average a pharmaceutical company will begin with over 10,000 compounds entering the drug discovery pipeline, progress 5 or fewer drug candidates into clinical trials, which will optimistically result in 1 approved treatment. This is a very long process, which averages from hundreds of millions to over a billion dollars per approved treatment. The majority of early testing is performed using in vitro models. Traditional static tissue culture plates are not ideal models for in vivo human drug exposure. Static models do not accurately replicate numerous in vivo processes, such as: dynamic in vivo plasma drug concentrations, metabolite effects, or inter-cellular communication. Therefore, current physiological outcomes of toxicity, safety, and efficacy are not realistically determined until compounds are evaluated in clinical trials. There is a compelling need for an in vitro technology that provides accurate predictions of toxicity and pharmacology. This technology needs to be physiologically relevant, grounded in human biology, incorporate flow conditions relevant to the in vivo environment, provide low (sub toxic) to high gradient exposures, and distinguish metabolism impacts from downstream bioactivations, in order to be pertinent to native in vivo systems.