Finnad­vance’s organ-on-chip plat­form advances immuno-oncol­o­gy ther­a­pies

Immuno-oncol­o­gy: a new era in can­cer treat­ment

Immuno-oncol­o­gy has emerged as one of the most trans­for­ma­tive and promis­ing fields in can­cer treat­ment. By har­ness­ing the pow­er of the immune sys­tem to rec­og­nize and fight can­cer cells, Immuno-oncol­o­gy ther­a­pies are rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing the way we approach can­cer care. This field has already demon­strat­ed remark­able suc­cess in the treat­ment of sev­er­al can­cers by focus­ing on lever­ag­ing the body’s immune sys­tem to iden­ti­fy and destroy can­cer cells.

Unlike tra­di­tion­al treat­ments such as chemother­a­py and radi­a­tion, which direct­ly tar­get can­cer cells, immuno-oncol­o­gy ther­a­pies aim to boost or restore the immune sys­tem’s abil­i­ty to rec­og­nize and com­bat tumor cells. The immune sys­tem has a nat­ur­al abil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish between nor­mal and abnor­mal cells, but can­cer cells can often evade immune detec­tion. Immuno-oncol­o­gy removes these immune check­points, enhanc­ing the body’s abil­i­ty to fight can­cer.

The break­through of organ-on-chip tech­nolo­gies

The devel­op­ment of new immune-oncol­o­gy ther­a­pies is hin­dered by a high fail­ure rate, with about 95% of can­cer drugs fail­ing clin­i­cal tri­als due to tox­i­c­i­ty or lack of effi­ca­cy. This high­lights the inad­e­qua­cy of cur­rent pre­clin­i­cal mod­els, like in vit­ro and ani­mal test­ing, in pre­dict­ing human respons­es. Organ-on-a-chip tech­nol­o­gy offers a solu­tion by mim­ic­k­ing human organ func­tions in minia­ture, lab-grown mod­els. These chips, made of human cells in microflu­idic chan­nels, enable more accu­rate, eth­i­cal, and cost-effec­tive drug test­ing. Finnad­vance has enhanced this tech­nol­o­gy to increase through­put, allow­ing for the test­ing of mul­ti­ple com­pounds.

AKI­TA organ-on-chip plat­form: mod­el­ing immuno-oncol­o­gy process­es

Finnad­vance, an Oulu-based start­up that man­u­fac­tures high-through­put organ-on-chip plat­form AKI­TA. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with Prof. Mikaela Grön­holm from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Helsin­ki, her team has cre­at­ed a tumor-on-a-chip that effec­tive­ly mod­els the impact of an engi­neered oncolyt­ic virus in recruit­ing immune cells to tar­get kid­ney can­cer. This proof of con­cept showed the poten­tial of the AKI­TA organ-on-chip plat­form for the test of new ther­a­pies. Ongo­ing research aims to fur­ther val­i­date the plat­for­m’s capa­bil­i­ties and expand its use in per­son­al­ized med­i­cine to select the most effec­tive treat­ments for patients’ cures.

The com­pa­ny has recent­ly announced receiv­ing €1.6 mil­lion in new grants from the Euro­pean Union. This fund­ing will sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhance their ongo­ing mis­sion to trans­form drug research and devel­op­ment by cre­at­ing more pre­cise and reli­able pre­clin­i­cal mod­els. Through this fund­ing, Finnad­vance will col­lab­o­rate with a con­sor­tium of top-tier part­ners to dri­ve the devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iz­ing of next-gen­er­a­tion organ-on-chip plat­forms. This new cap­i­tal under­scores the com­pa­ny’s lead­er­ship in the field and show­cas­es the pro­found poten­tial of our tech­nol­o­gy to address crit­i­cal gaps in med­ical research.

Read the full sci­en­tif­ic arti­cle: Feodo­r­off, M. et al. Enhanc­ing T‑cell recruit­ment in renal cell car­ci­no­ma with cytokine-armed ade­n­ovirus­es. OncoIm­munol­o­gy 13, 2407532 (2024). DOI 10.1080/2162402X.2024.2407532

More infor­ma­tion

contact@akita.bio

Source: Finnad­vance