Ibn's ‘Fish And Chips’ May Help Accelerate Drug Discovery

SINGAPORE, April 4 (Bernama) -- A cheaper, faster and more efficient platform for pre-clinical drug discovery applications has been invented by scientists at the Institute of Bio-engineering and Nanotechnology (IBN), the world’s first bio-engineering and nanotechnology research institute. Called ‘Fish and Chips’, the novel multi-channel microfluidic perfusion platform can grow and monitor the development of various tissues and organs inside zebrafish embryos for drug toxicity testing. This research, published recently in Lab on a Chip, has been selected for feature on the journal’s back cover. Zebrafish, and especially their embryos, are an important model for studying diseases and drug screening. The morphological and molecular basis of tissue and organ development in zebrafish embryos resemble those of humans, and the overall drug toxicity is also comparable with that observed in animals. In a statement here Wednesday, IBN group leader Prof Hanry Yu, who led the research efforts at IBN, said: “Toxicity is a major cause of drug failures in clinical trials and our novel ‘Fish and Chips’ device can be used as the first step in drug screening during the pre-clinical phase to complement existing animal models and improve toxicity testing. "The design of our platform can also be modified to accommodate more zebrafish embryos, as well as the embryos of other animal models. Our next step will involve investigating cardiotoxicity and hepatoxicity on the chip." -- BERNAMA