InSphero facilitates early detection of liver toxicity

The 3D InSight Human Liver Microtissues from InSphero have offered highly promising results in a benchmarking study. It was carried out by the biotech company from Schlieren in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, in conjunction with the National Center for Toxicological Research, a body of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) based in the US State of Arkansas, provided evidence that these microtissues correctly identified the vast majority of drugs that had been withdrawn from the market due to concerns regarding liver safety.

In a press release, InSphero describes this as “market-leading predictivity”. The company’s 3D in-vitro platform for liver safety, which works with 3D microtissues of the human liver, correctly identified 80 percent of the withdrawn drugs as being toxic to the liver. At the same time, 89 percent of the safe drugs were also correctly labelled. In terms of the drugs that target the nervous system, the success rate of the InSphero platform stood at 90 percent, according to the press release. Human liver microtissues therefore offer “a highly physiological model with the same throughput as traditional 2D cell cultures, but with far greater biological relevance”, as Dr. Bruno Filippi, Vice-President of Liver Safety at InSphero, explains.

The Study was published in the journal “Toxicological Sciences”. As drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is considered a major cause of development discontinuation of a drug, the InSphero platform could help to avoid experiments on animals and direct resources towards safer, more effective drug candidates at an early stage. This has a “profound impact on reducing late-stage failures and accelerating the delivery of safer drugs to market”, comments Dr. Madhu Nag, Chief Scientific Officer at InSphero.

InSphero is a spin-off from the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. The company is headquartered at the Bio-Technopark Schlieren-Zurich. ce/mm