Fast track MASH drug discovery with Organ-on-a-chip Studies
Our Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD)/ MASH* in vitro Services offer a preclinical tool to test therapeutics in a human-relevant model, replicating key disease phenotypes including fibrosis and reporting clinical biomarkers to allow translatability to clinical trials.
*previously known as Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) and Non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH).
MASH in vitro services overview:
We offer a collaborative approach, applying our extensive MASH expertise to designing an experiment that best suits your needs. Our established Liver-on-a-chip MAFLD/MASH assay can be adapted to investigate specific questions, focus on different endpoints, or provide samples for -omics analysis.
- Explore or validate the effect of your therapeutic in an industry-validated model
- Uses validated cells with known MASH-related genotypes
- Capture clinical markers with proven translatability
- Assess inflammation, fibrosis, steatosis, and cell health biomarkers
- Option to add -omics analysis of samples
- Full project report detailing methods and results and all raw data
Customer feedback
Working with CN Bio has been a pleasure, the team listened to our non-trivial requirements and made useful suggestions to help meet objectives. During the course of the project, the team were responsive and helpful. The results were delivered as agreed and helped us to move towards our goals.
Dr Giuseppe Ferrandino
Senior Translational Scientist at Owlstone Medical
Inipharm is developing a drug that targets a genetic metabolic target which has metabolomics differences between mice and men. For this reason, we evaluated several different primary human testing systems that have features of NASH. We found CN Bio has developed a system that has steatotic, inflammatory, and fibrotic features that have been very useful in evaluating our lead compounds. The scientists at CN Bio are very knowledgeable and have worked with us on the study details to obtain the best quality of results in a timely manner.
Heather Hsu
Chief Scientific Officer, Inipharm
I believe that the PhysioMimix OOC System and the MASH model will be our indispensable asset, which will enable us to predict the efficacy of compounds for MASH.
Shimpei Ao
Researcher, Biology Platform Group, Exploratory Research Department at EA Pharma Co., Ltd
Read the full review here
PhysioMimix Single-organ Animated Video
View more PhysioMimix reviews on SelectScience
How the service works:
Through the co-culture of primary human hepatocytes and non-parenchymal cells and the evaluation of multiple endpoints, our assay offers a complete assessment of MASH drug efficacy.
This service generates human-relevant data that captures the key pathophysiology of MASH, providing a complementary approach to murine models.
Your dedicated contact will work collaboratively with you from the start to the end of the project.
- Design and finalize experiment plan
- Customer supplies required amount of drug(s)
- Three to four weeks to complete cell culture
- Two to three weeks to run endpoint assays, analyze data and complete the report
- ~ two months to complete the study from receiving an order
Standard MASH cell culture timeline
Endpoint measurements
Included, but are not limited to:
Functionality biomarkers
- Albumin production
- Urea production
Clinical liver heath biomarkers
- Lactose dehydrogenase (LDH) release
- Aspartate Transferase (AST)/Alanine amino transferase (ALT)
Disease biomarkers
- Luminex®/ELISA assays
- Fibrosis (e.g. TIMP-1, Pro-collagen, Fibronectin)
- Inflammation (e.g. IL-6, IL-8 TNF-α)
- Confocal microscopy
- Smooth muscle actin
- Collagen
- Fat accumulation (Nile Red staining)
Related applications
Metabolic-dysfunction-associated-steatohepatitis
With anti-MASH therapeutics failing to pass clinical trials, a new preclinical test is required to improve human efficacy predictions. Our MAFLD/MASH application provides a pre-clinical in vitro model using human tissue to fully replicate this critical liver disease phenotype.
