Innovative therapies for MASH (Metabolic Dysfunction-associated Steatohepatitis, renamed from NASH) remain a critical unmet medical need. Our MASH Screening Program is designed to support your MASH drug discovery and developmental pipeline in identifying, prioritizing, and de-risking MASH drug candidates early on, using a robust, human-relevant 3D liver MASH model.
By enrolling your lead candidates into our established 5-week screening program, you can:
or discuss a customized MASH screening at your convenient timeline
Pharma & Biotech participants
customer compounds tested
customers identified their positive candidates
success rate in lead identification
We inspire researchers, worldwide, to reach their full potential so that life changing therapies can ultimately make it into the hands of patients.
Screen up to 50 compounds with 5-week turnaround, fitting seamlessly into MASH lead selection discovery workflows.
Evaluate lead candidates in a primary human, multicellular 3D MASH liver model that recapitulates key disease hallmarks.
Objectively compare your lead candidates with clinical-stage drugs to support your go/no-go decisions for prioritization
Start with a standardized screening program and progress selected candidates into advanced phenotypic follow-up as needed
Our MASH Screening Program (formerly NASH) supports teams from early lead prioritization through to in-depth phenotypic validation. Phase 1 enables scalable selection of the most promising lead candidates, while Phase 2 supports in-depth analysis for prioritized candidates
Screen up to 50 lead candidates per program in a human-relevant 3D MASH liver model to generate multiparametric efficacy and safety data. Evaluation based on established MASH hallmarks: extracellular LDH to assess hepatotoxicity, intracellular triglycerides to quantify steatosis, and secreted pro-collagen I to monitor fibrotic activity- supporting your early lead prioritization and risk assessment for confident go / no-go decisions in MASH drug discovery.
Figure: Effect of clinical candidates on steatosis and fibrosis in the 3D MASH model. Ervogastat reduces intracellular triglyceride (TG) content and lowers Pro-Collagen I secretion after 10 days of treatment. PLN-1474 decreases Pro-Collagen I secretion in a concentration-dependent manner.
Evaluate your lead candidates side by side with a curated panel of up to 10 clinical-stage MASH drugs and reference compounds, enabling objective comparison to industry benchmarks. This approach strengthens translational relevance of your findings, supporting data-driven early benchmarking.
Figure: Efficacy results of 10 clinical MASH drugs or tool compounds. Scatter plot comparison of 5 concentrations comparing PC-1 versus triglycerides values. Anti-steatotic or anti-fibrotic effects are shown as percentage versus MASH control over the Y and X axes, respectively.
Advance prioritized MASH candidates into a multidimensional phenotypic follow-up study to confirm efficacy and strengthen translational confidence using clinically relevant endpoints:
Figure: Sirius Red staining demonstrates enhanced fibrosis in the MASH liver model compared to the Lean model. FFA + LPS induction in 3D human liver spheroids generates a MASH-like pro- inflammatory phenotype with elevated TNF-α, MCP-1, and MIP-1α secretion versus LEAN control. Selonsertib (ASK1 inhibitor) served as anti-inflammatory reference
Extend phenotypic findings with advanced mechanistic and molecular analyses to understand how your lead candidate drives phenotypic outcomes:
Figure: AI-based image analysis of the fibrotic phenotype in the MASH 3D liver model
Assess lead candidate efficacy in patient-derived 3D MASH liver models generated from primary hepatocytes of steatotic donors or diverse genetic backgrounds (SNPs). This enables evaluation of inter-patient variability and supports informed patient stratification and risk-mitigation strategies.
Your lead candidates are evaluated in our validated 3D InSight™ Liver MASH model, built from primary human hepatocytes and key non-parenchymal cells, including Kupffer, endothelial, and stellate cells – to deliver robust, human-relevant safety and efficacy data.
Phase 1: Study design and treatment schedule
After phase 1 screening program, meet with InSphero’s scientific experts to review the results and discuss next steps for prioritized candidates – optimizing study design and building a robust, decision-ready data package for efficient progression.
“For our lead target at Inipharm, a human-centric system is extremely important for proof of concept. InSphero’s primary human liver spheroids under culture conditions that resulted in fibrotic and inflammatory processes was able to reproduce known human genetic phenotypes relating to our target of interest. Additionally, the MASH Screening Program testing platform was an efficient way for us to assess multiple leads for potential efficacy.”
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