CN Bio, a leading Organ-on-a-Chip (OOC) company specializing in designing and manufacturing single- and multi-organ microphysiological systems (MPS), has announced the pivotal role of its PhysioMimix® assay in affirming the effectiveness of INI-822. INI-822 is a prospective treatment for Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) developed by Inipharm, a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to discovering and developing therapies for severe liver diseases. The use of in vitro OOC for early evidence of INI-822's efficacy underscores the transformative potential of these models in providing human-relevant data during preclinical programs.
Inipharm has initiated Phase 1 dosing of its lead candidate, INI-822, a small-molecule inhibitor targeting HSD17B13, a gene implicated in NASH. Loss-of-function variants of this gene are associated with a reduced incidence risk and severity of multiple liver diseases. As part of the recent regulatory submission, CN Bio's Contract Research Services team utilized the company's PhysioMimix OOC Systems and NASH 'in-a-box' (NIAB) kit to generate essential data for determining compound efficacy.
Despite ongoing research to address the growing prevalence of NASH, the absence of regulatory-approved therapeutics persists due to the limitations of traditional in vivo approaches in accurately predicting the human response to this complex metabolic disease. Alongside the PhysioMimix OOC, CN Bio's 'in-a-box' range aims to expedite the integration of MPS into drug discovery workflows by providing a straightforward and rapid pathway to replicate the company's industry-proven models and assays. The NIAB kit was introduced to support the urgent development of NASH therapeutics, offering physiologically relevant insights into disease mechanisms, human drug efficacy, and potential treatment regimens. The assay overcomes the human-relevance limitations of existing approaches, bridging the gap between human 2D cell culture and expensive, inefficient animal models that fail to replicate the complete disease spectrum.
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