ARTIC

Currently, 90% of drugs fail to pass clinical trials due to inaccurate safety prediction in the preclinical phase. Organ-on-a-chip (OoC) is a promising approach that has proven to predict drug safety and efficacy better than animals and other traditional preclinical models. However, industry adoption of OoCs is still very limited. There is a dilemma: OoCs users and developers have to choose between either a system with physiologically relevant flow but not fit for pharmaceutical procedures (e.g. automation, reliability, and reproducibility), or a system that is closer to the procedures but less physiological because of inadequacy of the flow. To accelerate industry adoption of OoC, a new pumping technology is needed that meets both criteria. This is what ARTIC offers by providing a “Magnetic Artificial Cilia (MAC) pump”: a chip-sized, modular and tubeless flow system that eliminates manual handling, enables automation and higher throughput, does not interfere with circulating cells and at the same time provides physiological flow for a range of organ models. The MAC pump consists of a disposable chip module with micrometer-sized magnetic hair-like structures (called MAC) that generate flow by moving, and an actuation system that remotely controls the movement of the MAC. The MAC pump is a tubeless “plug-and-play” solution that can fit many available organ chips in the market. CTO of ARTIC, Prof. Jaap den Toonder, leads the SMART OoC consortium where we are directly connected to OoC developers and pharma, giving ARTIC a head start. Laure van der Sanden (CEO) and Dr. Hossein Amirabadi (CSO) are entrepreneurs that will lead ARTIC towards a successful company that has a real impact in making drug development more efficient and reducing animal testing. For this mission, we need 2 million Euros in the coming five years to bring the product to the market, and this will result in an annual revenue of 15 million Euros in 2030. This will be the start of ARTIC in becoming the leader in liquid manipulation systems at micro-scale with the aim of enhancing health and sustainability.