Organ-on-Chip: Animal-Free Methods for Drug Safety Testing

The predictive power of animal tests of new human drugs is poor, so we must find a new and better way to test the safety of new drugs. Our overall ambition is to develop new high throughput methods that advance preclinical testing using advanced human tissue culture with long term aims that will positively impact humans (with safer, more effective medicines), whilst replacing the use of animals in in vivo drug testing.
To achieve this, we will work with our partner, the charity Animal Free Research UK (AFRUK) to transform pharmaceutical testing of new drugs using novel optical spectroscopic methods to probe deep into cell-based constructs of animals' organs (as a so-called "organ-on-chip). The new methodologies will be demonstrated within pharmacokinetic applications by exploring parameters involved in the metabolism of drugs in the liver (and their toxicity) and/or the adsorption of drugs either across the skin or within the GI tract. The ambition is to provide accurate models of the processes of drug uptake and metabolism in vitro, without using in vivo animal testing.
The project will provide you with experience of working at the interface between the biological sciences and physics/chemistry/engineering, with the opportunity to develop new spectroscopical/optical sensing methods and novel organ-on-chip cell culture techniques. The work will be aligned to the principles of AFRUK, and "organs" will be assembled as spheroid constructs in microfabricated devices using animal free culture methods.