Cells in Matrix

Europe, as well as other parts of the world have been affected by a dramatically increasing prevalence of diabetes that has nearly quadrupled since 1980, adult diabetes prevalence (for both T1D and T2D) reached 425 million people in 2017 (about one in 11 adults) and is estimated to rise to 629 million till 2045. Annually, 5-10% of the Diabetic patients stop responding to the currently available diabetes drugs. There is a constant need for more effective diabetes solutions and medications. One of the main obstacles in developing new diabetes drugs is the poor predictability of the current model systems for identification of lead compounds during drug discovery. This lack of predictability has been cited as one of the reasons for the excessive expense associated with bringing a new Diabetes drug to market. The failure rate of new drugs development is about 90% and the cost for reaching the market with a new drug reaches up to €1 Billion. This Project plans to develop the an Engineered Micro Pancreas (EMP) based on organ-derived 3D cell culture and human sourced insulin producing cells as a novel model and tool for accelerating and cost reduction of diabetes drug research and testing.