I-Corps: Microfluidic Device for the Evaluation of Drug Carrier Delivery

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Current therapeutic drugs are typically tested in static culture dish first, followed by testing within animals, and finally progressed into pre-clinical trials in humans. This is a long and expensive process, which could benefit from a tool designed to assess nanomedicine performance in an inexpensive manner while still maintaining conditions presented within the human body. The proposed technology is a small and transparent device which allows for blood vessels to be mimicked outside of the human body while still retaining the characteristic features of such vessels. The significantly easier to use and more cost effective system will save both time and money when testing therapeutic performance prior to animal and pre-clinical testing. The proposed platform allows for therapeutic candidate screening which in turn reduces costs and time required to run animal and pre-clinical trial. As such, any researcher working in industry or academia would benefit from the use of the proposed microfluidic system to analyze key characteristics of new therapeutics. Through the use of the proposed novel microfluidic device, this I-Corps team is able to deliver a platform capable of improving the testing and analysis process for drug/therapeutic development and ultimately aiding in the delivery of new and improved drugs to market for patients in need. Overall, expediting the drug development process will help extend and improve the lives of patients around the world. Technically, the device is comprised of a microfluidic chip that is cast from molds in order to form micro-scale channels. The bilayer channels which make up the devices are separated from each other with a semipermeable membrane which spans the entire device, allowing only specific content to pass from the apical (top) channel into the basal (bottom) channel. Using this simple yet effective device, research has been conducted proving the ability to culture cells within the device, ability to assess drug carrier binding and uptake, as well as work geared towards more specific applications such as tumor micro-environment studies, inflammation, and permeability. As such, the main goals for the I-Corps program are, to further develop a customer base through in-depth market analysis and research, to identify customers' needs and perspective of the technology, and to gather customer feedback for improvement of the technology. Given such goals, the major scope for the completion of the I-Corps program is to bring the technology to market so that it can begin to assist researchers and scientists outside of the Lehigh University lab.