InSphero awarded major EU grant for diversity in 3D in vitro 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. The project, with an overall budget of €68 million, receives €14 million in funding from the Chips Joint Undertaking, €3 million from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), and €18 million from national agencies.

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

InSphero leads the first of five use cases with a budget of roughly €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.

Dr. Olivier Frey, member of the UNLOOC executive board and project leader at InSphero, commented, “UNLOOC provides us with the right framework and excellent partners to accelerate our cryopreservation, automation, and read out platforms, thereby widening our lead in scalable and information-rich solutions. Addressing diversity in in vitro testing requires a next generation of production and analysis techniques allowing for economically viable solutions and high-resolution data acquisition to resolve patient and population-related differences of drug effects. The combination of our expertise and the 3D InSight Microtissue portfolio provides us with a unique foundation to do so.”

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).