Welcome back to our “Meet the CN Bio team” blog series, where we are showcasing the unique expertise and talent that makes us who we are.
We sat down with Uranbileg (Una) Myagmarsuren, one of our Development Engineers, to talk about what ignited her passion for Organ-on-a-chip (OOC), and what led her to join CN Bio.
Ever wondered about the intricate work that goes into developing a Multi-organ-on-a-chip model? Una gives us an interesting overview of what a day in the life of a Development Engineer looks like. Read on to discover Una’s fascinating insights into the challenges her team encountered when developing our industry-leading OOC models.
1. Tell us more about your academic and career history and how that led you to your role at CN Bio?
My undergraduate degree was in Biomedical Materials. I have always had an interest in Biology – I enjoyed learning about it at school, but for my degree, I wanted to focus on a specialized area of Biology. When I was researching universities, I visited Queen Mary University of London on their open day and there was a stall with medical implants that were used in reconstructive surgeries. I found it really interesting, and that gave me a new direction into what I wanted to do – a degree incorporating Engineering and Biology!
After I graduated, I joined a medical devices company, which feels like a long time ago now. It was my first job out of university, and I worked there for 9 months, helping to develop the Company’s blood gas analyzer. That was around the time I came across CN Bio, when they were relocating their head office from Welwyn Garden City to the Cambridge Science Park. This meant the Company was growing and looking to expand their teams, which worked out well for me! So, here I am now, part of the Product Development team, working as a Development Engineer.
2. How long have you been with CN Bio, and what do you enjoy most about your role?
I joined CN Bio in November of 2019, which is quite a few years ago now! The people and the culture are definitely at the top of my list of what I enjoy most here. I like working with all my colleagues and I don’t think I’ve yet encountered a single person here that I don’t enjoy working with.
Another aspect of the job, which is important to me, is the variety they offer in the projects I work on. I am simultaneously involved in different things, so I am never stuck repeating the same tasks every day. This means, I get to improve my skills in multiple areas, and it is never boring coming to work.
We have a dedicated group of volunteers – The Social Gang- that organizes different activities for the employees. For example, just a few weeks ago, they arranged an evening of Go Karting and the entire venue was booked for CN Bio! Although, as you can expect in England, it was raining on the day, it was really good fun, nonetheless.
3. What would you say is your greatest accomplishment since joining the company?
While the company has achieved many of their important milestones since I started, and my team was involved in the projects, I have a personal achievement to share which I am very proud of.
When I started at CN Bio, I had not used CAD or SolidWorks; I was a beginner with rudimentary skills. However, on this job, I’ve had the opportunity to use the software and develop the skills to use it effectively with confidence. I am now certified for both the Associate and Professional levels of CAD. Additionally, I’ve used the skills to independently design rigs for our projects. To give you some context, if you are not that familiar with our products – a rig is a sub-assembly used for our liver models. It consists of four small parts, and we need forty-eight of those for every single PhysioMimix® Liver-48 plate that we manufacture. Of course, time is money, and productivity would be rather poor if we had to do these, one at a time, by hand. So, I produced a rig, that allows us to punch the whole thing out at once. That means, it now comes together in a single press and is assembled in one go. This drastically improves the efficiency of the process and minimizes human error.
4. What initially sparked your interest in the field of bioengineering?
I don’t know if you remember, some time ago, there was a Channel 4 documentary – How to Build a Bionic Man. I was fascinated by the show; how they combined technology and non-biological materials and got it to work with the human body. My initial inspiration for my journey into biomaterials was medical implants, and that’s exactly the sector I wanted to build my career in. However, it’s a niche market and finding opportunities as a fresh graduate was more challenging than I had initially anticipated, so I opened my mind about where else my skills could be applied.
I am pleased I found my way into Organ-on-a-chip. Even though it’s vastly different from where I initially thought my career would take me, I’m excited to be here. At CN Bio, we’re developing a technology that aims to improve the drug discovery process, bringing much-needed treatments to the masses faster, cheaper and with less animal testing, that also reduces risks during in vivo and clinical trials.
Although Organ-on-a-chip technology has been around for a couple of decades, it is still a relatively recent technology. If you know the market, you’ll agree that there are a lot of prototypes, mostly developed and used by research groups at universities, but there aren’t many platforms that are fully functional. And that’s what we do at CN Bio, we can give our customers commercially validated technology that they can readily implement in their studies.
5. What does a day in your role look like and what is the focus of the work you do at CN Bio?
That’s always a difficult question to answer, especially when you are the type of person who seeks out opportunities to work on different projects on a regular basis!
So, an average day for me can vary quite a bit. Some days involve cleaning and inspecting parts, which may sound simple, but can easily take up half a workday. It involves being at the microscope, inspecting features on the plates and taking measurements. It’s much more interesting than it sounds! For example, the tests could be part of a validation process to ensure the parts match certain test criteria. My day can involve checking consumables to make sure they are working after gamma sterilization, or assessing the flow rates to see if it matches what the experimental design requires.
Mostly, my tasks are performed in the engineering lab, but sometimes I work in the Biology lab, for example when I am working on collagen coating our scaffolds. These scaffolds go into our consumables and provide a platform for our cells to grow into functional 3D structures.
Being part of the small engineering team also has its perks – I’m exposed to a lot more than I would be at a larger corporation. I’ve had the chance to use a pillar drill to modify parts and make breaks out of wooden blocks, and much more.
6. CN Bio also develops multi-organ models – How do these differ from single-organ models? What extra challenges do they pose?
Our multi-organ consumable plates have two compartments, essentially being two single-organ models that are connected by fluidic flow. We have a multi-organ model, the Gut/Liver-on-a-chip, which can be used to assess the action of both the gut and the liver on therapeutic compounds. The design for this model is more complex than its single-organ counterparts and incorporates more pumps and valves. We continually improve the design and utility of our consumables and have now developed a better pump and valve design for our multi-organ models.
When it comes down to the consumable plate design, we must consider the biology, manufacturing logistics, materials, costs, and time. As a business, we have to make sure our products are both useful for the customer and commercially viable for us.
7. What developments do you think we will see in the Organ-on-a-chip space in the next 5 years?
In the coming years, I expect to see a movement towards higher throughput systems. This will enable scientists to increase the number of drugs and different conditions they can test simultaneously. Biological experiments tend to be costly, so providing researchers with solutions that combine multi-organ systems with higher throughput capabilities could be a game changer in the next 5 years.
Inspired to learn more about our Organ-on-a-chip technology? Visit our brand-new Organ-on-a-chip Technology page to learn more!