NEURAL MICROTISSUES
Re-thinking the future of drug discovery and disease modeling​.
Recapitulating the brain in the lab is no easy task, especially since it involves complex vasculature and the Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB).
Frontier Bio can reproduce these complexities.
Chip Format
NeuroTraX™: Blood-Brain-Barrier Chip
NeuroTraX™ provides a human Blood-Brain-Barrier (BBB) in an easy to use and image format. The BBB is continuous unlike other chips that require posts or membranes which disrupt tissue continuity. Our chip allows the formation of the Neuro-Vascular Unit (NVU) - a critical functional unit of the brain.
Sphere Format
NeuroDots™: Vascularized Neurospheres
NeuroDots™ can be used for drug and toxicity screening, and even bio-hybrid computation / intelligence. Vascularization allows delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the entire tissue, enhancing tissue function and improving translational value.
Rapidly investigate questions about:
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Drug Transport (Can the drug cross the BBB?)
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Neurological Effects (How does the drug affect the brain?)
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Drug Toxicity (Is the drug toxic to the brain or BBB?)
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Drug Efficacy (Does the drug improve neurological disease features in vitro?)​
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Disease Modeling (What are the mechanisms of disease?)
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Read the paper in Nature Biomedical Engineering here.
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EXAMPLES
CANCER METASTASIS
​This figure shows NeuroTraX™ BBB cell-selectivity as a model for cancer metastasis. MB-231Br, a brain-seeking cancer line, extensively invades the NVU as compared to the wild-type MB-231 which does not cross the BBB.
ISCHAEMIC STROKE​
​NeuroTraX™ can be used to monitor several disease states. The figure above shows its application in ischaemic stroke modeling. Other diseases applications include traumatic brain injuries, Alzheimer's disease, viral infection, and mutation-specific familial diseases among others.
STEM CELL THERAPY​
​NeuroTraX™ BBB cell-selectivity screens for effectiveness of cell-based therapies and screen non-BBB-crossing cell therapies out of the pipeline.