As­traZeneca steps up its use of Em­u­late's 'or­gan chip' tech; An­sun Bio­phar­ma's parain­fluen­za ther­a­py at­tracts $85M from Asian VCs

→ As­traZeneca $AZN is invit­ing Em­u­late sci­en­tists in­to its own labs in an en­dorse­ment of its or­gans-on-chips tech­nol­o­gy. The part­ners will ini­tial­ly fo­cus on us­ing the liv­er chip to test safe­ty for some can­di­dates in As­traZeneca’s pipeline, in hopes of gen­er­at­ing da­ta us­able in a reg­u­la­to­ry sub­mis­sion pack­age. To­geth­er, they might al­so work on the func­tion­al­i­ty of three oth­er chips — im­i­tat­ing a lung tu­mor, lung, and glomeru­lus in kid­ney, re­spec­tive­ly — and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing mea­sur­ing in­stru­ments and soft­ware. “Work­ing side by side with Em­u­late sci­en­tists will en­able us to bet­ter de­vel­op the plat­form and may im­prove our abil­i­ty to pre­dict ad­verse and non-ad­verse ef­fects in hu­mans,” said Mene Pan­ga­los, EVP of As­traZeneca’s In­no­v­a­tive Med­i­cines and Ear­ly De­vel­op­ment unit. Found­ed on tech­nol­o­gy out of the Wyss In­sti­tute, Em­u­late touts its plat­form as a su­pe­ri­or al­ter­na­tive to an­i­mal or cells in dish­es, more pre­dic­tive of how drugs would per­form in hu­man bod­ies. The UK phar­ma gi­ant signed on as ear­ly as 2013, fol­lowed by deals from Roche and Take­da an­nounced weeks ago.

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