I-Corps: Commercialization of A High Throughput Cell Mechanical Stimulator

基于细胞的检测已广泛用于药物发现，其中药物在各种外部刺激下对活细胞的有效性和毒性进行检查。具有高通量能力的芯片实验室技术通过显著减少应用这些刺激和获得细胞反应的时间和成本，极大地推动了基于细胞的测定的发展。然而，目前通过机械信号刺激活细胞的技术具有相对较低的通量。本项目旨在探索高通量细胞机械刺激器的商业化潜力，将控制菌株应用于大量体外培养细胞群。该技术为细胞生物力学和力学生物学领域的生物学研究者提供了重要的研究工具。该技术的高通量和多路传输能力满足了对活细胞进行机械刺激并行应用的迫切需求。因此，了解机械信号如何调节细胞功能以及它们如何与药物和药物协调是一个吸引了大学和制药行业大量研究人员特别关注的基本问题。该装置有望提供一个强大的研究工具，以增强我们对机械信号的作用及其与药物/药物的协同作用的理解。它有望加速机械生物学的新知识和许多领域疾病的新治疗方法。它还将允许高通量筛选针对机械激活细胞和组织治疗的药物和药物。大大提高的吞吐量和较低的单次测试成本也有望将市场从大学的基础研究实验室扩大到制药工业的临床前和应用研究部门。

Cell based assays have been widely used for drug discovery, where the effectiveness and toxicity of drugs on live cells in presence of various external stimulations are examined. Lab-on-chip technologies with high throughput capability have greatly propelled the development of cell based assays by significantly reducing the time and cost of applying these stimulations and obtaining the cell responses. Current technologies that stimulate live cells by mechanical signals, however, have relatively low throughput. This project is to explore the commercialization potential of a high throughput cell mechanical stimulator, which applies controlled strain to a large number of in vitro cultured cell groups. The proposed technology provides an important research tool for biological researchers in the field of cellular biomechanics and mechanobiology. The high throughput and multiplex capability enabled by the proposed technology meets the imperative needs for parallel application of mechanical stimulation to live cells. Understanding how mechanical signals regulate cell function and how they orchestrate with drugs and medications is therefore a fundamental question that attracts extraordinary attentions of a large number of researchers in universities and pharmaceutical industry. The proposed device is expected to provide a powerful research tool to enhance our understanding of the role of mechanical signals and their synergistic effects with drugs/medications. It is expected to hasten new knowledge in mechanobiology and new treatments against diseases in many fields. It will also allow high throughput screening of drugs and medications that target on treatments of mechanical-activated cells and tissues. The greatly enhanced throughput and lower per-test cost are also expected to expand the market from basic research laboratories at universities to pre-clinical and applied research divisions in pharmaceutical industry.