Long-term Microphysiological Sample Imaging for Evaluation of Polypharmacy in Liver
Long-term Microphysiological Sample Imaging for Evaluation of Polypharmacy in Liver
DeLIVERY aims to build a radically new technology for personalized healthcare, which provides, for the first time, the possibility to investigate multiple drug use (polypharmacy) in individual patients. Polypharmacy is the effect that the multiple combinations of drugs which are typically prescribed to the chronically sick or the elderly population (e.g. painkillers, beta blockers, blood thinners, anti-depressants, and statins) have on the human body. Polypharmacy is becoming a major issue in the ageing population, as well over 10% of hospital admissions for people over 60 years of age are due to currently unknown interactions of the multiple drugs being prescribed by physicians routinely visited by the elderly. Currently, no single platform exists that can be used in a highly parallelized fashion to monitor such effects at the cellular and tissue level. DeLIVERy will provide an integrated micro-physiological system (MPS) culture and microscopic imaging platform specifically for the purpose of maintaining, treating and long-term imaging of patient-specific cells within their microenvironment. This MPS platform will allow physicians, biomedical scientists, and researchers to determine the individual response of human tissue biopsies to a combination of multiple drugs. DeLIVERy will enable individualized treatment options providing essential tools towards a better quality of life for older people by allowing improved personalized healthcare. Novel medicine with the potential to reverse the effects of ageing and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) will be tested within typical polypharmacy contexts to determine possible interactions, and the DeLIVERy MPS system will be the purpose-built platform to provide this service. Such a system also requires a paradigm shift in microscopy away from the single, bulky instrument providing one imaging modality towards compact and modular, yet still high-end, devices.
Collaborators:
HORIZON-EIC-2021-PATHFINDER OPEN
HORIZON-WIDERA for Hop-on Facilities