About MechanoBiologix
Circumventing Costs and Animal Trials with Innovative Technology
MechanoBiologix champions for a relevant, non-animal-based alternative to replicate human physiology, diseases, and drug responses, based on precision cut lung slices (PCLS). This technology not only benefits many companies that seek to meet 3R objectives (replace, reduce, refine animal experiments) but also independent scientists who are looking for cheap, easy, human-relevant models for mechanistic or early efficacy studies.
-Reducing risk and time taken in drug development also eventually leads to lower drug costs for the end user, without sacrificing profit margins.
-Encouraging pharmaceutical companies to undertake the endeavor, due to less doubts on an uncertain return on investment.
-By directly focusing on disease-relevant pathophysiological changes at an early stage in drug discovery, our approaches can reduce false positives and false negatives, demonstrate respiratory drug effectiveness more quickly, and lower the time and cost of drug development by years and by hundreds of millions of dollars, respectively.
Our Mission
The Problem
Respiratory diseases such as asthma, COPD, lung cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, pneumonia, and Covid-19 represent an enormous health burden and a leading cause of death worldwide. Yet, the likelihood of a new drug entering the market has a probability of only 3%, with around 80% of drug candidates failing in preclinical development and testing.
Our Solution
MechanoWell utilizes a pre-clinical tissue preparation that closely resembles the human lung – the human PCLS – and enables assessment of PCLS contraction, stiffness, structure, toxicity, and biological responsiveness in a drug screening-amenable format. We focus directly on de-identified human tissues from disease-derived or under disease-inducing conditions. Our methods enhance confidence, decrease animal testing, and validate disease-specific mechanisms.