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

目前的治疗药物通常首先在静态培养皿中进行测试，然后在动物体内进行测试，最后进入人类临床前试验。这是一个漫长而昂贵的过程，可以受益于一种旨在以廉价方式评估纳米医学性能的工具，同时仍能保持人体内的状况。这项拟议的技术是一种小型透明设备，可以在保持血管特征的同时，模拟人体外的血管。当在动物试验和临床前试验之前测试治疗性能时，更易于使用和更具成本效益的系统将节省时间和金钱。拟议的平台允许进行治疗候选筛选，这反过来又减少了运行动物和临床前试验所需的成本和时间。因此，任何在工业界或学术界工作的研究人员都将受益于使用拟议的微流控系统来分析新疗法的关键特征。通过使用拟议的新型微流控设备，i-Corps团队能够提供一个能够改进药物/治疗开发的测试和分析过程的平台，并最终帮助为有需要的患者向市场提供新的和改进的药物。总体而言，加快药物开发进程将有助于延长和改善世界各地患者的生命。从技术上讲，该设备由一个微流控芯片组成，该芯片由模具浇铸而成，以形成微尺度的通道。构成器件的双层通道由横跨整个器件的半透膜彼此隔开，仅允许特定内容物从顶端(顶部)通道进入底部(底部)通道。使用这种简单而有效的设备，已经进行了研究，证明了在设备内培养细胞的能力，评估药物载体结合和摄取的能力，以及面向更具体应用的工作，如肿瘤微环境研究、炎症和渗透性。因此，i-Corps计划的主要目标是通过深入的市场分析和研究进一步发展客户基础，确定客户的需求和对技术的看法，并收集客户反馈以改进技术。鉴于这些目标，完成i-Corps计划的主要范围是将技术推向市场，以便它能够开始帮助利哈伊大学实验室以外的研究人员和科学家。

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.