BioTester™: HepaHope Approach
The BioTester™ is intended to be a predictive in vitro toxicology testing system for pre-clinical pharmaceutical drug development. By utilizing HepaHope’s core proprietary technology to maintain the structural and functional integrity of organ slices, The BioTester™ facilitates bio-reactive functioning that more closely mimics that of actual human organ systems. Animal studies can be extremely expensive, depending upon the number and types of animals needed. Typical animal toxicological studies can cost up to one million dollars to complete, especially if primates are required for the study, and may take as long as two years for the test results to be finalized. By simulating the human system and not relying upon animal tests, it should provide a more cost-effective means of obtaining better and more predictable results.
The BioTester™ is designed to accommodate the need to determine multi-organ and multi-drug interactions. HepaHope believes that this new testing process will be particularly useful for drug development companies that need to determine the possible effects their drug may have on other organs in the body as well as the organ being targeted for therapy. The BioTester™ line will include several specific assays for drug screening, toxicity and metabolism tests, pharmacokinetic tests, and drug validation tests. The Company believes that by providing concomitant organ responses in drug validation testing, the BioTester™ can greatly improve drug safety for human clinical trials, potentially reducing the time and cost of successfully marketing new products.