InSphero Wins Sino-European Innovation Award for Breakthrough NASH Discovery and Safety Testing Platform
Participation in the event sets the stage for ongoing partnerships and engagement with researchers and drug developers based in China.
Schlieren, Switzerland – November 4, 2019 - InSphero AG today announced the company received an award at the 2019 Sino-European Innovation Week in Healthcare Technology (SEIWHT) meeting held in Nanjing, China. At the event, InSphero highlighted its 3D InSight™ Human Liver Disease Discovery Platform for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a breakthrough 3D cell technology for drug discovery and safety testing.
“We were honored to participate in SEIWHT and describe how our 3D InSight™ platforms are advancing drug discovery and development and accelerating progress in finding cures not only for liver disease but also diabetes and cancer,” said InSphero Chief Business Officer Frank Junker, PhD. “The use of more physiologically relevant models is gaining traction in the industry — one example is our research partnership with Akero Therapeutics (NASDAQ: AKRO) in which our liver tissue platform is being used to characterize physiological effects of a NASH drug candidate currently in Phase 2a clinical trials.”
SEIWHT was co-organized by BioTalk (Serge Perriard, Founder & CEO), Technopark Zürich, and Swissnex China, an initiative of Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). Swissnex nurtures opportunities in China for ground-breaking science and technology firms based in Switzerland. InSphero, which was invited by International Co-Innovation Center for Advanced Medical Technology (iCCAMT) founder and CEO Dr Hui Wu and the SEIWHT co-organizers, earned a second-place award in a session showcasing innovative technologies for the Chinese life science market. InSphero platforms will benefit Chinese researchers in academia and industry who are working at the forefront of complex disease drug discovery.
“We were proud to see InSphero at SEIWHT representing truly innovative advances being developed and offered by Swiss companies,” said Swissnex Science Consul and CEO Dr. Felix Moesner. “InSphero is transforming many aspects of drug discovery and development, and we are excited to help make connections to regional life sciences hubs in China, enabling researchers and drug developers to take full advantage of these breakthrough technologies.”
InSphero’s 3D InSight™ Human Liver Disease Platform has been precisely engineered to include all cell types and inducers necessary to replicate NASH progression in patients, from fatty liver (steatosis) to inflammation (NASH) and scarring (fibrosis) of the liver. This game-changing preclinical discovery platform enables scalable in vitro drug efficacy assessment, screening, combinatorial testing as well as the study of complex NASH pathophysiology.
