Bayer will test new drugs for heart patients on human cardiac tissues printed with XNUMXD printers - in order to quickly and cheaply reject more toxic or ineffective drugs * In the coming years: Bayer and the laboratory at Tel Aviv University plan to test drugs on whole printed hearts
The international pharmaceutical giant Bayer will collaborate with the laboratory of Prof. Tal Dvir from the Faculty of Life Sciences, the Faculty of Engineering and the Sagol Center for Regenerative Biotechnology at Tel Aviv University. As part of the agreement, the company will test the effectiveness of new drugs on human cardiac tissues that have been engineered in the laboratory - with the aim of quickly and cheaply rejecting more toxic or ineffective drugs. In the coming years, Bayer and the researchers from Tel Aviv University hope to test new drugs on whole printed hearts as well. The outline of the cooperation and the signing of the agreement was led by Ramot, the technology commercialization company of Tel Aviv University.
In April last year, Prof. Tal Dvir and his team led a global breakthrough when they printed a living human heart in the laboratory, from tissues taken from a patient. The researchers estimate that within 10-15 years the technology they developed will allow each patient to print the organ or tissue they need in a customized way, without the need for organ donation and without fear of transplant rejection. But already today Prof. Dvir's printed tissues have the potential to revolutionize another field: drug development.
As a rule, new drugs go through several stages of trials before they reach the pharmacies. In the first step, the chemical compound is tested on human cell cultures in petri dishes. In the second stage, the drug is given to model animals, such as mice. And only in the third stage, subject to all approvals, do they advance to a clinical trial in humans. Prof. Dvir's printed XNUMXD tissues will enable a fast, cheap and much more efficient test than petri dishes - and more similar to human tissue.
"In a Petri dish, the cells line up in a two-dimensional dish," explains Prof. Dvir. "This is a culture of one type of cell. On the other hand, our engineered tissues are printed with XNUMXD printers, so they better simulate the tissues of the heart. Our printed tissues contain heart muscle tissue, blood vessels as well as the intercellular material that links the cells biochemically, mechanically and electrically. The transition from Petri dishes to printed tissues can significantly optimize the development of drugs - because a drug that does not work on the tissue, or that is toxic to the tissue, will simply stop its development in the first stage. Our technology will save expensive experiments and precious time, with the aim of developing more effective and safe medicines for humans."
According to Prof. Dvir, the goal of the initial collaboration with Bayer is to advance to pre-clinical trials on intact printed organs. "The initial agreement between my lab and Bayer is an initial feasibility study for a much larger project," says Prof. Dvir. "Ultimately, our goal is to engineer complete human hearts, which will be printed with all the different tissues, chambers, ventricles, blood vessels, when the XNUMXD printers allow us to reproduce the complex architecture of the human heart. After that, the effect of new drugs on the engineered heart will be tested."
In addition, on the basis of the same technology developed in Prof. Dvir's laboratory, the Matricelf company was established last year, which engineers human tissues from the patient's own materials for medical purposes. The company's first goal is to produce human spinal cord implants for the treatment of paralyzed people, and it recently completed another recruitment round.
"Prof. Dvir's groundbreaking platform is very promising. We believe that the collaboration with Bayer will support the ability to evaluate and develop new drugs and that this is another step in building a long-term relationship with Bayer, which will ultimately also yield beneficial results for patients," said Keren Primor Cohen, CEO of Ramot.
Eckhard von Koetz, director of translational research at Bayer, said: "We are excited to start this new collaboration with Tel Aviv University, in the new area of safety and early resistance assessment for Bayer drugs. Already today we have a global network of partners, and the new project will allow Bayer to expand its innovation activities to Israel, which provides a dynamic ecosystem for innovation in biotechnology and medical research."
More of the topic in Hayadan:
- Israeli researchers succeeded in printing a heart from induced human stem cells; Will hearts be printed from the patients' own cells in the future?
- Researchers have succeeded in developing a technology to engineer all body tissues for transplantation from a tiny piece of fat of the transplanted person himself
- A heart patch containing materials from the patient's body may replace heart transplants
