CN Bio and LifeNet Health LifeSciences Partner to Supply Validated Primary Human Cells for Microphysiological Systems

• Partnership to provide customers with direct access to portfolio of highly characterized hepatic cells to recreate advanced Liver-on-a-Chip assays
• Pre-validated cells alleviate the need for stringent in-house quality control testing to maximize assay success

Cambridge, UK, 06 September 2023: CN Bio, a leading Organ-on-a-Chip (OOC) company that designs and manufactures single-and multi-organ microphysiological systems (MPS), and LifeNet Health LifeSciences, “LifeNet Health”, a non-profit, global leader in all-human research solutions, today announced a strategic partnership to supply validated primary human cells for use with CN Bio’s PhysioMimix^® OOC range of MPS. Under the agreement, LifeNet Health’s high-quality, MPS validated, hepatic cells will be available within CN Bio’s Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH) ‘in-a-box’ kit, or direct from LifeNet Health, providing a streamlined solution for customers to recreate the Company’s advanced in vitro liver models and maximize assay success.

Lot validation in standard static 2D or 3D cell cultures does not guarantee primary cell performance in perfused MPS cultures. Analysis carried out by CN Bio over a 5-year period demonstrated that >60% of hepatocyte cell lots across various suppliers failed to meet acceptable performance criteria for MPS assays. Pre-validating cell lots for use in MPS assays is therefore necessary to ensure that robust and reliable human-relevant data can be generated. The validation process itself requires users to factor in additional resource, time and budget to prove cell stability prior to use.

CN Bio and LifeNet Health have formed a partnership to provide PhysioMimix customers with ‘off-the-shelf’ access to well-characterized, MPS-validated hepatic cells that facilitate the delivery of reliable, reproducible results. This partnership aims to alleviate the need for researchers to conduct resource-intensive validation studies and minimize the risk of failed experiments to increase workflow efficiency. Through the partnership, customers will additionally benefit from LifeNet Health’s reputation for providing high quality cells, access to large lots, greater donor diversity, and more complete donor medical and genetic information.

Under the new agreement, CN Bio will use a stringent process to pre-qualify select hepatocyte, stellate, and Kupffer cells proven to thrive in extended 3D MPS culture, maintaining function and phenotype for a minimum of two weeks. To support a range of research requirements, hepatic cells can be purchased via CN Bio’s 3D-validated cells portfolio and NASH-in-a-box kit, or direct from LifeNet Heath.

Tomasz Kostrzewski, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at CN Bio, commented: “LifeNet Health and CN Bio share a commitment to helping researchers bring safer, more effective therapies to patients sooner, with no unnecessary animal testing.” He added: “In our studies, LifeNet Health’s cells have consistently shown high success rates, and we are confident this will lead to more reliable, reproducible results. Our partnership represents an important milestone for existing customers, alongside those looking to adopt OOC technology into their own labs. Validation of cells is a costly and laborious process, but one that is imperative for assay success. Harnessing our combined technical expertise and customer support, we can offer researchers a more complete solution to easily recreate our industry-leading liver models, removing the risk of failed experiments due to untested cells and the burden of in-house quality control testing – so that they can focus their efforts on new discoveries.”

Ed LeCluyse PhD, Chief Scientist, LifeNet Health LifeSciences, said: “This partnership represents a joint investment to set a new standard for cell quality across the industry, enabling customers across a broad range of market segments to realize the potential of OOC, without the need for costly in-house validation.” He added: “Our cells are fully characterized for quality and performance, to ensure they can perform within advanced platforms, to more effectively mimic in vivo biology.”

• LifeNet Health and CN Bio will be exhibiting at EUROTOX Congress (booth 28 and 30, respectively).
• LifeNet Health will also be exhibiting at the 25th North American ISSX Meeting (booth #104).

For more information, speak to the teams at these events or visit LNHLifeSciences.org and cn-bio.com.

To learn more about this announcement, please visit: https://lnhlifesciences.org/partnership-with-CN-Bio

ENDS

About CN Bio https://cn-bio.com/

CN Bio is a leading organ-on-a-chip (OOC) company that offers a portfolio of products and services to optimize the accuracy and efficiency of bringing new medicines to market; providing significant savings in cost and time to drug discovery and development pipelines. With more than a decade of research and development experience in multi-organ microphysiology, CN Bio aims to transform the way human-relevant pre-clinical data is generated through the development of the most complete model of the human “Body-on-a-Chip” in the laboratory.

The Company’s range of lab-benchtop PhysioMimix^® microphysiological systems (MPS) enable researchers to model human biology in the lab through rapid and predictive 3D human tissue-based studies that harness microfluidic technology to provide nutrients and mimic blood flow. The technology bridges the gap between traditional cell culture and human studies, advancing towards the simulation of human biological conditions to support the accelerated and more efficient development of new therapeutics, whilst reducing the dependence on animal model usage.

CN Bio’s MPS support researchers that require reliable, data-rich, in vitro studies, to uncover novel mechanistic insights into a broad range of biological processes across healthy and diseased cell-types, in addition to identifying novel therapeutic targets and investigating drug efficacy, pharmacokinetics and potential toxicity.

The Company’s next-generation OOC assays span a range of organ types, including lung, liver and gut. Single organs can be linked together into multi-organ systems to simulate processes such as drug absorption and metabolism, or to understand interactions between organs, such as inflammation.

Harnessing these assays, its portfolio of MPS, 3D validated cells, compatible consumable plates and research services have been developed to address drug development bottlenecks across a range of therapeutic areas, including metabolic and infectious diseases, oncology, and inflammation.

CN Bio’s headquarters and laboratories are based in Cambridge, UK, with an international network of distributors.

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