Qualifying a human Liver-Chip for predictive toxicology: Performance assessment and economic implications

• Published in: bioRxiv
• Main Authors: Ewart, Lorna, Apostolou, Athanasia, Briggs, Skyler A, Carman, Christopher V, Chaff, Jake T, Heng, Anthony R, Jadalannagari, Sushma, Janardhanan, Jeshina, Kyung-Jin, Jang, Joshipura, Sannidhi R, Kadam, Mahika, Kanellias, Marianne, Kujala, Ville J, Kulkarni, Gauri, Le, Christopher Y, Lucchesi, Carolina, Manatakis, Dimitris, Maniar, Kairav K, Quinn, Meaghan E, Ravan, Joseph S, Rizos, Ann C, Sauld, John Fk, Sliz, Josiah, Tien-Street, William, Dennis Ramos Trinidad, Velez, James, Wendell, Max, Irrechukwu, Onyi, Mahalingaiah, Prathap Kumar, Ingber, De, Scannell, Jack W, Levner, Daniel
• Format: Paper
• Language: English
• Published: Cold Spring Harbor Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 02.08.2022
• Subjects: Biochips; Biotechnology; Computer applications; Consortia; Drug development; Intelligence; Liver; Pharmaceutical industry
• DOI: 10.1101/2021.12.14.472674

Human organ-on-a-chip (Organ-Chip) technology has the potential to disrupt preclinical drug discovery and improve success in drug development pipelines as it can recapitulate organ-level pathophysiology and clinical responses. The Innovation and Quality (IQ) consortium formed by multiple pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to confront this challenge has published guidelines that define criteria for qualifying preclinical models, however, systematic and quantitative evaluation of the predictive value of Organ-Chips has not yet been reported. Here, 870 Liver-Chips were analyzed to determine their ability to predict drug-induced liver injury (DILI) caused by small molecules identified as benchmarks by the IQ consortium. The Liver-Chip met the qualification guidelines across a blinded set of 27 known hepatotoxic and non-toxic drugs with a sensitivity of 87% and a specificity of 100%. A computational economic value analysis suggests that with this performance the Liver-Chip could generate $3 billion annually for the pharmaceutical industry due to increased R&D productivity. Competing Interest Statement L.E., D.L., D.V.M., J.D.S., A.A., S.A.B., J.T.C., C.V.C., A.R.H., J.J., S.J., S. R. J., J.F.K.S., M.M.K., M.K., K.K.M., M.E.Q., A.C.R., W.T., M.W., G.K., V.J.K., C.Y.L., C. L., J.S.R., D.R.T., J.V., K-J.J. are employees or former employees of Emulate Inc. and may hold equity; D.E.I. is a founder, board member, SAB chair, and equity holder in Emulate Inc. J.W.S. is a shareholder and director of JW Scannell Analytics LTD and received payment from Emulate Inc. for contributing to this work. Footnotes * Additional data on a third hepatocyte donor has been added as well as additional information regarding the economic model is included. Consequently Jack Scannell has been added as an author.