InSphero Blog

Toxicological studies show that drugs can alter mitochondrial functions, potentially resulting in a deleterious range of toxic reactions from the induction of micro- and macrovesicular steatosis to lactic acidosis. These clinical manifestations are the consequence of drugs interfering with four

Ensuring that spheroids are intact during liquid exchange is not fun and certainly not easy. That’s why we developed our Akura™ Microplates with a special feature to make your life much easier: The SureXchange™ well design enables optimal protection of

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) remains a significant challenge in the development of safe and effective pharmaceuticals. The complexity of DILI assessment in the preclinical phase is compounded by the need for solutions that balance cost, throughput, and turnaround time without

To 2D or 3D Cell Culture - that is no longer the question.
It has become evident that 3D cell-based assays outmatch traditional 2D monolayer cell cultures, as they enable cells to grow into three-dimensional structures that more closely

InSphero's Scientific Ambassador Sue Grepper, Ph.D., highlights how to recapitulate clinically observed increases of Aspartate Transaminase (AST) levels in preclinical in vitro safety studies. If you have experienced a clinical study where your developed therapeutics resulted in increased levels of

InSphero Head of Operations David Fluri explains how our new award-winning InFloat™ shipping system helps make 3D in vitro cell technology more accessible to researchers worldwide. Did you know InSphero was the first biotech company to successfully ship live 3D

InSphero Islet Biology Scientists review how multi-parametric approaches for in vitro pancreatic research have the potential to revolutionize diabetes research. In this article, we take a closer look at the Power of Islet Standardization for Diabetes Research. Over the past

InSphero has a rich history of collaborating with researchers at ETH Zürich. The most recent example is a joint effort to develop and apply a novel Hanging Drop Organ-on-a-Chip System to study insulin release dynamics for diabetes drug discovery. Our

Microfluidics expert Dr. Olivier Frey, VP of Technology & Platforms, discusses scalable organ-on-chip systems and explains how higher-order systems, such as multi-tissue Body-on-a-Chip networks, have the potential to faithfully replicate physiological interactions among different human organs -and what hurdles remain

InSphero recently had an opportunity to test the Yokogawa Platform for 3D High Content Analysis (HCA) in our laboratories in Schlieren, Switzerland. Our goal was to see whether the Yokogawa instrument could meet our demanding requirements for imaging and analysis

An ongoing challenge in NASH Drug Discovery is selecting "fit for purpose" models for preclinical drug screening. InSphero liver expert Sue Grepper and Head of Liver Solutions Eva Thoma recently wrote a GEN tutorial on this topic to help NASH

InSphero Oncology Experts Francesca Chiovaro and Irina Agarkova often collaborate closely with academic and pharma partners who are developing therapeutics that target the innate immune system. In this blog, Francesca shares what she and Irina have learned about the influence of

Model systems, whether laboratory animals or human cell-based systems, have long been central to the discovery and development of new and better drugs for the treatment of human disease. But some complex diseases, such as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), are more

InSphero Senior Application Scientist Sue Grepper explains why critical limitations of dietary and genetically modified rodent models for NASH may be slowing down drug discovery efforts in this blog.  She elaborates on some of the challenges of using animal models

InSphero CEO Jan Lichtenberg and renowned liver disease expert Dr. Scott Friedman of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai recently talked to PharmaExec magazine about how to resolve a key bottleneck in NASH R&D. In this blog, Jan

InSphero's Akura™ technology platforms team worked with Professor Andreas Hierlemann's Bioengineering Laboratory at ETH Zürich to develop a microfluidic hanging drop system for embryotoxicity testing. What can we help you create? In this blog post, I'd like to tell you

InSphero CEO Jan Lichtenberg reflects on ADA2019 and how InSphero is enabling T1D and T2D Discovery with our 3D InSight™ Diabetes Discovery Platform. Over the past few years, diabetes R&D has become a key application for our 3D InSight™ technology,

Microfluidic chips enable researchers to manipulate, image, and analyze small tissue constructs under optimal culturing conditions. Microfluidics, the technology behind emerging body-on-a-chip and organs-on-chips systems, is poised to transform the way we do drug discovery and drug safety testing. But

Pharma companies racing to accelerate drug discovery for chronic liver diseases, such as NASH and fibrosis, need better preclinical testing tools for compound screening and mechanistic studies. Here's how next-generation in vitro of 3D cell models will help. Recently, InSphero

Correlating human pancreas donor characteristics with 3D InSight™ Islet Microtissue functionality confirms reaggregated islets are a robust, physiologically relevant model for diabetes research. With diabetes approaching epidemic proportions globally, there is an ever-increasing need for anti-diabetic drugs and therapies that

In honor of the inaugural International NASH Day, Insphero explains why we need better preclinical models for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) disease drug discovery. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the most prevalent liver diseases worldwide. Experts estimate that approximately

InSphero Akura™ Flow body-on-a-chip technology may help make animal testing in pharma and cosmetic companies obsolete How can we better predict how new drugs act in the human body? This was the main question when we started our publicly funded