This Penn-founded Biotech Company Specializing in Human ‘Organs on Chip’ Raised $4M

University of Pennsylvania-founded biotech company that helps scientists test drugs and therapeutics has raised $4 million in order to more widely adopt their platform that embraces “organs on chip” technology.

Research into potential drugs is usually performed first on mice, and success is only found in a fraction of humans once implemented in clinical trials, Andrei Georgescu, cofounder and CEO of Vivodyne, told Technical.ly. The genetic makeup just isn’t similar enough. But technology that allows scientists to test therapies on lab-grown human organs called “organs on chip” is allowing for testing without human subjects.

The organs on chip allow for a drug to react to tissue in a more similar way to the body than it would in a petri dish, Georgescu said. Cells sense their environment very well, he added.

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