CHENNAI: Chennai-based startup ISMO Bio-Photonics has developed a palm-sized 3D-printed microfluidic chip to provide personalized drug screening for cancer patients.
The chip mimics the functions of an organ with a cell, and bioreactors. They have also developed an artificial intelligence-based model that can detect cancerous cells and find the efficiency of drugs.
"We can find the right drugs in two weeks, contrary to the trial-and-error method currently used to evaluate the effectiveness of drugs, which could take months and has a low success rate," Ikram Khan, founder and CEO of the startup told TNIE.
Ikram has successfully demonstrated the growth of the brain cell in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and holds patents for microfluidic chips and bioreactors. He claimed that this personalized testing would be cheaper when delivered at-scale.
The startup is in talks with Adyar Cancer Institute (WIA) and Apollo Hospitals, among others for collaboration.
"Our aim is to develop a more efficient and affordable platform to address the rising cancer cases burdening our health system," Ikram said.
He started ISMO Bio-Photonics along with Dr Shantanu Pradhan, Professor of Biotechnology at IIT-M. They plan to set up an at-scale lab with 200 devices for different parties at a cost of around `100 crore. They have to start clinic trials to get regulatory approval for the technology by 2025.
The chip can also be used to test and treat Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, in vitro fertilization (IVF), and brain modeling, among others.
Another important focus area of IIT-M incubated ISMO is organ-on-chip-based drug trials, which has the potential to cut down on drug development and testing time and reduce drug failure rates. This has gained significance as the US drug regulator plans to phase out drug trials on animals and push for advanced alternative methods.
"This would help pharmaceutical research in mass drug screening in situations like pandemic. During COVID-19 vaccine development the industry faced a huge shortage of certified lab animals," he said.
"ISMO's technology can be more than 80% identical to human trials due to its high physiological relevance to human dynamic response, thereby increasing success rates," said Ikram.
While the organ-on-chip can mimic the function of a single organ, the human-on-chip technology could mimic the functions of multiple organs, model the immune system, which helps in drug trials.
The startup has so far raised grants from the IIT-M incubation cell, Startup India and plans to raise further from strategic investors and venture capital firms.