Based on "AI + Organ-on-a-Chip" to develop new drugs, "YaoSu Technology" has reached a cooperation with this pharmaceutical giant | Early-stage project

Written by Hu Xiangyun

Edited by Hai Ruojing

This is a transparent sheet that appears to be less than half the size of a palm. However, it contains oxygen, culture medium, and various types of cells, capable of "replicating" the various functions and microenvironments of human organs, allowing researchers to conduct disease simulations, drug development, and other work. This sheet is called an "organ-on-a-chip".

In the initial vision of the industry, the organ-on-a-chip can create a more ethical experimental scenario: Scientists do not need to "humanely dispose of" hundreds or even tens of millions of laboratory animals every year, but can complete all tests on drug safety and effectiveness on the chip. Economically, this blueprint is also extremely attractive. According to Gaotejia Data, without including breeding costs, the price range of animal experiments can reach from $6,500 to $800,000. However, the cost of some existing organ-on-a-chip experiments is only 10% of that of animal experiments.

In 2022, the Modernization Act 2.0 of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was approved; in 2024, the US Congress introduced the FDA Modernization Act 3.0 to accelerate the promotion and application of the 2.0 Act in pharmaceutical companies. This originally niche track has officially ushered in an unprecedented development opportunity. Allied Market Research data shows that by 2030, the organ-on-a-chip market is expected to exceed $1.6 billion.

How is this technological revolution, which may "subvert" the traditional new drug development method, currently being applied in the industry? Recently, we talked to Yaosu Technology, which is engaged in the development of organ-on-a-chip products, about this topic. Yaosu Technology was established at the end of 2021 and has now established operating entities in Boston, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Zhengzhou, and other places, and jointly established an AI + Organoid Clinical Application Center with multiple hospitals and research institutes.

Xie Xin mentioned that if the expectation of the industry for organoids and organ-on-a-chips more than a decade ago was to replace animal experiments, the current common perception has actually become more rational: It is not a replacement, but "using organ-on-a-chips and animal models together to build a more complete and scientific preclinical drug testing model and carry out IND declaration", thereby improving the accuracy rate of the drug pipeline after entering the clinical stage, while achieving the goal of cost reduction and efficiency increase.

"Overall, the recognition of large overseas pharmaceutical companies in this direction is higher. The top MNCs will basically set up research and development departments related to microphysiological systems (MPS) and cooperate with organ-on-a-chip companies. The FDA has also participated in and led some cooperative organizations such as the OASIS Consortium to jointly formulate industry standards with pharmaceutical companies. Currently, our related businesses are mainly concentrated overseas, and our service clients include enterprises such as Sanofi and L'Oreal. Starting this year, we will also focus on strengthening cooperation with domestic pharmaceutical companies to use AI and organ-on-a-chips to help pharmaceutical companies accelerate the listing of new drugs." Xie Xin introduced.

Take the recent cooperation between Yaosu Technology and Sanofi as an example. The two sides will jointly develop an organ-on-a-chip model for vascular toxicity assessment. The research is funded by the Sanofi Innovations in Data Exploration & Analytics Awards.

In the process of new drug development, vascular toxicity is an important safety assessment indicator. As an important way for drug delivery and exertion of effects, functional damage to blood vessels may cause serious adverse reactions such as thrombosis. In traditional methods, the methods for evaluating the toxicity of blood vessels or other organs are mainly animal models, but "due to species differences, the conversion efficiency is often very low, which easily leads to situations where something appears safe and effective in animal models, but fails once it enters clinical trials". In contrast, the organ-on-a-chip can precisely simulate the microenvironment of human blood vessels through microfluidics and bioengineering methods, improving the efficiency and accuracy of toxicity assessment, thereby providing a more reliable technical guarantee for drug development.

Schematic of organ-on-a-chip products (Source: Yaosu Technology)

However, as a still relatively cutting-edge technology application, what capabilities do MNCs engaged in the development of organ-on-a-chip-related products consider when choosing partners?

It is reported that these cooperations with Sanofi have gone through an approximately 8-month preparation period from the beginning of negotiations to implementation. "From the perspective of technical advantages, in addition to having made a lot of early technical accumulations in the research of organ-on-a-chips related to blood vessels, our layout in the AI direction, such as constructing and developing relevant databases and designing a new method for determining the drug effect, is also one of the capabilities that MNCs pay attention to."

Xie Xin mentioned that in the past two years, one of the common characteristics of organ-on-a-chip companies established overseas is that "the combination with AI is very close". Whether their initial stage is mainly focused on testing services or clinical business, their ultimate goal is mostly to build a database through the combination of high-throughput organ-on-a-chips and AI, and then "use the three-dimensional data set in this database to discover some new drug pipelines that were not found in animal models or two-dimensional cell sheets before".

"We believe that the combination with AI is the ability that the next-generation organ-on-a-chip companies need to possess. Essentially, the organ-on-a-chip is an underlying engineering platform, and what is more valuable is the biological data produced based on this platform. Then, how to explore the potential of these biological data, such as new drug pipelines, may be our future advantage."

It is worth noting that this is also one of the expected paths for the future development of enterprises in this track in the industry. In addition to developing in the direction of precision instrument equipment manufacturing and CRO, Biotech, which is positioned to develop new drugs based on organoid/organ-on-a-chip technology, is also regarded as a business model that may widely emerge in the future. "We hope that in the future, licensing the new drug pipelines discovered to large pharmaceutical companies can become the second growth curve of Yaosu Technology's revenue."

It is also learned that after the announcement of a hundred-million-yuan-level Angel + round of financing in July 2024, Yaosu Technology is about to complete a new round of Angel series financing. In addition, the company expects to start the Pre-A round of financing by the end of 2025.