BioTester™: Background

Pre-clinical pharmaceutical drug development entails significant investments in time and financial resources (including animal costs), investments that can become especially or even prohibitively large when in vivo studies using live animals are required. As a result, in vitro testing has become an increasingly essential tool in the development and marketing of new pharmaceutical drugs. Beyond the cost factor—and perhaps equally important—assays for xenobiotic toxicity utilizing in vitro methodologies have recently received heightened consideration by key government agencies (e.g.: EPA, NIEHS/NTP, FDA), due in no small measure to a societal movement to reduce the use of animals in research, as well as the fundamental need to better assess human risks.

While most toxicologists agree that in vitro toxicity testing methods are a useful, time and cost-effective supplement to in vivo studies, they also generally agree that the available in vitro tests are not presently adequate to entirely replace animal toxicology tests. HepaHope’s BioTester™ was developed with a view toward addressing that inadequacy by providing a more efficient, accurate, and cost-effective in vitro testing system—one capable of further reducing the need for expensive and out-of-favor animal testing.

• Technology Overview
• Background on Liver Therapies
• HepaPheresis
• Chemosensitivity Testing System
• BioTester
• + Background
• + HepaHope Approach
• Intellectual Property