CN Bio awarded Innovate UK grant to reduce animal use in pharmacokinetic studies

CN Bio, a leading provider of Organ-on-a-chip (OOC) Systems and solutions that accelerate drug discovery and development workflows, today announced it has been awarded £180k grant funding from Innovate UK.

cnb1690 innovate uk award v1 | Innovate UK grant

Grant funding delivered in partnership with the NC3Rs, in support of UK Government roadmap to reduce animal testing by 2030
Project to develop standardized workflow to more accurately predict drug behaviors, reduce animal testing and streamline development of safer, more effective medicine

Delivered in partnership with the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs), the funding aims to support new approach methodologies (NAMs) for use in drug development, aligning with the UK Government’s roadmap to reduce dog and non-human primate (NHP) use in pharmacokinetic (PK) studies 35% by 2030¹.

The grant will enable CN Bio to develop a workflow integrating data generated using its advanced human multi-organ microphysiological systems (MPS) with physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models – providing a more practical, human-relevant alternative to animal-based PK studies.

Despite significant advances in NAMs, including laboratory and in silico methods, predicting drug behavior in humans remains a key challenge. As a result, the pharmaceutical industry continues to rely on animal studies to generate PK data on compound absorption, clearance, and systemic exposure. These studies, often conducted in dogs and non-human primates, are costly, low throughput, and offer poor translatability to human outcomes. There is a critical need for accurate, human-relevant alternatives, as recognized in the Government’s November 2025 roadmap.

CN Bio’s portfolio of bioengineered MPS recreate key aspects of human tissue biology, delivering decision-ready insights across drug safety, efficacy and PK analyses. The Company’s standardized discovery and development workflows de-risk pipelines with earlier, more confident decision-making, helping to reduce reliance on animal testing in pharmaceutical research.

The Innovate UK‑funded project will explore the development and validation of a standardized workflow for human‑relevant PK studies, building on CN Bio’s established dual‑organ PhysioMimix^® Gut/Liver MPS. Mechanistic data generated within the MPS will be used to derive a range of PK parameters. These parameters will then be integrated with powerful in silico PBPK modelling, enabling researchers to generate mechanistic PK insights and translate them into clinically interpretable predictions within a single workflow.

To further improve these predictive capabilities, the project will include a feasibility study to incorporate a kidney model into CN Bio’s MPS platform, enabling estimation of renal clearance and other excretion-related processes. In parallel, the practicality and impact of introducing liquid handling automation will be explored to improve throughput, reproducibility, and suitability for routine use. As part of implementing this workflow, the Company will partner with contract research organizations to define the technical and operational requirements for its adoption.

Dr Yassen Abbas, Biology Group Leader, CN Bio, said:

“We’re proud to have been selected for this project by Innovate UK, an exciting opportunity to advance the UK government target to reduce dedicated PK studies using dogs or non-human primates by 35%. Understanding pharmacokinetics is crucial to determining a drug candidate’s efficacy and potential side effects, and this project represents a valuable new route to unlock earlier, human-relevant insights into drug disposition – ultimately supporting faster, more effective drug development.”