PFI-TT: Development of an Automated Cell Culturing Platform for Highly Efficient and Reliable Drug Testing in Physiologically Representative Disease Models

这一创新-技术转化伙伴关系(PFI-TT)项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力使药物测试更快、更可靠。该项目将建立首个自动细胞培养平台，使制药公司能够更快、更高效、更可靠地预测昂贵的动物和人类药物试验是否合理(高达10亿美元)。这导致：(1)更便宜、更快速、更可靠地收集每个样本的数据，(2)更稳健的产品质量，以及(3)显著减少劳动力。最后，将设计一个教育计划，培训不同的创业学生在商业化和运营生物技术初创公司方面对时间敏感的财务、法律、管理和伦理方面的培训。拟议的项目提高了在用作微尺度疾病模型的活培养物中执行局部细胞和/或化学操作(即，移除/收集、交付/添加)的能力，而不会显著干扰正在进行的实验。上述好处是通过以下方式产生的：(1)对细胞行为的实时非牺牲监测(与目前市场上的常规产品所必需的典型的牺牲终点分析相反)；(2)立即检测到在培养内纠正的问题(而不是等待终点分析发现它们的存在)，并且以一致的自动化方式；以及(3)与培养和分析细胞相关的人工劳动的自动化。项目目标是：(1)使培养平台更容易由经验不足的用户设置和操作。这将通过将其单独的硬件和电子部件捆绑到单个即插即用系统中来实现；(2)设计一次性培养插件，以确保客户的系统无菌并为合作伙伴带来经常性利润；以及(3)开发一种制造配方，使产品的劳动密集度低于用于制造其阿尔法原型的人工方法。这将使用激光切割和3D打印等自动化工具来完成。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project to make drug testing faster and more reliable. This project will build a first-of-its-kind automated cell culturing platform that will allow pharmaceutical companies make faster, more efficient, and reliable predictions regarding whether costly (up to a $billion) animal and human drug trials are justified. This leads to: (1) cheaper, faster, and more reliable data collection per sample, (2) more robust product quality, and (3) a significant labor reduction. Lastly, an education program will be designed to train diverse entrepreneurial students in the time-sensitive financial, legal, managerial, and ethical aspects of commercialization and running biotech startups.The proposed project advances the ability to perform localized cell and/or chemical manipulations (i.e., removal/collection, delivery/addition) within living cultures used as disease models on microscales and without significantly disturbing an ongoing experiment. The benefits articulated above are generated by: (1) real-time non-sacrificial monitoring of the cell behavior (as opposed to the typically sacrificial endpoint analysis necessitated by the conventional products currently on the market); (2) detected problems corrected within the culture immediately (as opposed to waiting until the endpoint analysis to find out about their existence) and in a consistent automated manner; and (3) automation of the manual labor associated with culturing and analyzing the cells. Project objectives are to: (1) Make the culturing platform easier to set up and operate by an inexperienced user. This will be done by bundling its individual hardware and electronics components into a single Plug-and-Play system; (2) Design disposable culturing inserts for ensuring system sterility for the customers and recurring profits for the partnership; and (3) Develop a fabrication recipe that will enable less labor-intensive mass manufacturing of the product than the manual method that was used to create its alpha prototype. This will be accomplished using automated tools like laser-cutting and 3D printing.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.