Organs-on-a-chip for COVID-19
Published on May 1, 2020
By Dr Malcolm Wilkinson
We all want to do our bit to help the COVID-19 effort, which is why I’m proud to announce a new partnership between the company I founded, Kirkstall Ltd, and Animal Free Research UK. Together we are today launching a call for proposals from UK scientists centred around the use of innovative organ-on-a-chip technology.
This collaboration will enable research teams to respond quickly and use their skills to help the world understand how to treat this coronavirus, using cutting-edge technology to replace the use of animals in trials.
Kirkstall Ltd. is providing Quasi Vivo® cell test chambers together with technical support from myself, without charge to five research teams selected by Animal Free Research UK. Animal Free Research UK is also making a grant of up to £500 for consumables per successful application.
Organ-on-a-chip technology is one of the most exciting developments in human relevant research. It allows scientists to replicate human organs on a micro scale using living human cells. And importantly, it enables them to include a mimic of blood flow in 3D tissue-like organoids so that they can analyse how an organ might respond to treatment in the same way that it would in the human body.
Traditional animal research has failed to give us the answers scientists need to treat human diseases, which is why I founded Kirkstall in 2006. The devastating coronavirus pandemic highlights the urgent need to reduce the time and money we put into misleading animal models of disease and focus instead on human based biology and human relevant technology such as the Quasi Vivo® system.
Dr Malcolm Wilkinson is a specialist in medical and biomedical devices and founder of Kirkstall Ltd. He is co-author on several papers on in-vitro models of toxicity and a contributing editor of a recently published book on In-Vitro Testing. He is a champion for the use of leading-edge technology to replace animal testing for the development of safe drugs, nutraceuticals, chemicals and cosmetics.
Applications CLOSED [deadline: 11 May 2020 (5pm)]
Find out more and submit your proposal here.
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