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Faster Future 2017: A muscle-on-a-chip for muscular dystrophy
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
This #GivingTuesday, help accelerate scientific research into muscular dystrophy
** Update: The Faster Future website is now open for donations! **
Faster Future (#IBECfasterfuture), launched in time for Giving Tuesday 2017, is IBEC’s new fundraising initiative. We’re inviting people to help us accelerate scientific research by supporting projects that are at an advanced stage in tackling major challenges in health.
IBEC’s Faster Future project for this year, led by Dr. Javier Ramon, will develop a new platform – a ‘muscle-on-a-chip’ – that uses a patient’s own cells to study myotonic dystrophy type 1, a progressive disability that begins in adulthood and affects 50,000 people in Spain alone. As well as modelling the patient’s disease in a personalized way, the platform will also allow the study of different drugs or treatments in conditions that mimic the body as closely as possible, as well as offering a more reliable alternative to animal models.
Our crowdfunding campaign in 2017 aims to raise the 25,000€ needed to carry out the last phases of the project: equipping the chip’s muscle tissue with biosensors, validating the platform and drug testing.
At the moment, there are no equivalent technologies like it in the world. If we can raise at least 18,000€, these final phases of the project could begin in January 2018, and a prototype of a muscular tissue platform on-a-chip could be available by the end of 2019. With everybody’s help, we can advance the arrival of this personalized solution to be able to bring it to patients as soon as possible.
This #GivingTuesday, please help us make this medicine of the future a reality!
