Summer school | New Frontiers in 3D

Drug safety testing is an essential part of drug R&D. New drug candidates must be tested in animals before they can enter first-in-human trials. The current animal testing paradigm has proven advantages as well as significant weaknesses.

New Alternative Methods (NAMs) are increasingly being used to compensate for these weaknesses. In this roundtable, our panelists discuss challenges and opportunities for applying in vitro and in silico models in drug development to improve translation to patients.

Panelists: Dr. Stefan Platz from AstraZeneca, Prof. Thomas Hartung of Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Prof. Armin Wolf from InSphero AG.

In this summer school episode about industrial applications for complex, yet scalable 3D in vitro models for drug discovery, the panelists discuss the importance of balancing experimental complexity and scalability, and how thoughtful engineering can ensure successful translation from academia to industry.

Panelists: Prof. Jaap den Toonder, Professor and Chair of the Microsystems section, Eindhoven University of Technology. Dr. Peter Loskill, Assistant Professor, Research Institute for Women’s Health, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen. Dr. Florian Fuchs, Senior Principle Scientist, Nuvisan Innovation Campus Berlin. Dr. Olivier Frey, Head of Platforms and Technologies, InSphero AG

Our understanding of the human T1D etiology, along with proposed therapeutic options, has greatly advanced during the last decades. Nevertheless, the rate of bench-to-bedside translation is still disappointingly slow. In this summer school episode, the panelists explore major discoveries and knowledge gaps in our understanding of T1D pathogenesis, and emerging therapies to treat or prevent T1D, and their potential challenges.

Panelists: Prof. Matthias Hebrok, Professor at the Diabetes Center at the University of California San Francisco. Prof. Matthias von Herrath, Vice President and Senior Medical Officer at Novo Nordisk. Prof. Mark Peakman, Senior Director of Autoimmunity and Type 1 Diabetes research at Sanofi. Dr. Burcak Yesildag, Vice President – Diabetes Research at InSphero AG.

In this summer school webinar, InSphero Senior Application Scientist Sue Grepper, Ph.D. will provide an overview of the many types of in vitro and in vivo models used for studying NAFLD and NASH.

Then she’ll take you on a virtual tour of how the InSphero scientific team evaluates new drugs and therapies under development, using Gilead's Firsocostat, an ACC inhibitor currently in Phase II trials, as an example. Sue will also share some of the latest results from our internal studies that show how NASH conditions affect the regulation of lipid metabolism genes and pathways in our 3D models.

In this summer school webinar, experts from InSphero and Yokogawa discuss considerations for high-content imaging and analysis of 3D spheroid disease models for drug discovery, share lessons we learned while setting up and conducting proof-of-concept studies designed to test the full potential for high-resolution image-based analysis of 3D spheroid models and provide a working checklist for researchers and core services groups planning to exploit these technologies in their work.

In this summer school webinar, InSphero Scientific Ambassador Dr. Sue Grepper focuses on a novel human 3D NASH model, consisting of 4 different liver cell types relevant to this disease development and findings relating to compound modalities other than classic small molecules.

PharmaNest CEO Dr. Mathieu Petitjean presents the FibroNest™ Digital Pathology AI platform for innovative phenotypic quantification of fibrosis using over 400 parameters. This complex disease model and histological assay could be used as a translational drug discovery tool for the prediction of efficacy and potency of anti-fibrotic drug compounds in the clinic.