Every year, ten million people die from cancer and half a million die from neglected tropical diseases. Although there are incredible advancements being made in these fields every day, there’s still a tremendous need for more effective, cheaper, and more accessible treatments. One of the biggest roadblocks in drug development is a lack of efficacy of promising drugs when tested in humans. In fact, half of all experimental drugs don’t make it past Phase III trials. And with the average cost of bringing a drug to market surpassing $1.3 billion, researchers need more, high quality data to select drugs with a better chance of ending in success.
Unlocking drug discovery for small labs
Because drug discovery and development is a complex and costly process, many small and medium sized labs can’t perform the high-throughput screening experiments needed to sift through millions of possible therapies to find a small few viable candidates. This means there’s a significant amount of untapped research potential amongst various institutions. If it were possible to perform high-throughput screening on the order of millions of compounds per day with just a biosafety cabinet and a microscope, thousands of small laboratories could inexpensively participate in the drug discovery process. This is the vision that scientists at Lionheart Biotechnology are working to make a reality.
Lionheart’s drug screening microarray technology allows researchers to screen entire drug libraries within each well of a standard cell culture plate. By miniaturizing cell-based high-throughput screening assays, Lionheart seeks to unlock drug discovery for laboratories all over the world. Lionheart is on track to deliver its first drug screening microarrays to customers by the end of the year.
How it works
Drug screening microarrays are manufactured by printing thousands of drugs onto the surface of a microscope slide, cell culture plate, or coverslip. These microarrays are shipped out to customers who then culture cells over the arrays. The cells then take up the drugs and are screened using high-content imaging to detect hits. By taking the microarray route, a single 96-well cell culture plate can be used to screen over 100,000 compounds. Test compound usage is reduced by over 99%, while drastically cell usage is. Furthermore, because the fluid-handling step is removed from the end user, there’s no requirement for expensive lab automation equipment. With drug screening microarrays, it’s possible for a small laboratory to screen millions of compounds per day.
We’re aiming for our tech to be involved with discovering every new small-molecule therapeutic for cancers and viruses.
Max James, Founder
Researchers believe that by combining the large amounts of data generated early on in the drug discovery process with the power of artificial intelligence, better drug candidates will be selected for clinical trials, leading to less expensive drug development projects and more effective drugs down the line. Soon, Lionheart’s lab-on-a-chip technology will not only be used by small labs, but by large drug development companies to support their current drug discovery pipelines.
Your next lab shopping list will likely include pipette tips, cell culture media, and Lionheart microarray plates.
Brad Wollman, CMO
For more information, please feel free to reach out at contact@lionheartbio.com.