IBEC is one of the partners in the ambitious European project UNLOOC, a public-private collaboration involving 51 organisations from 10 countries with a budget of €68 million. The consortium aims to develop Organ-on-Chips technologies to reduce the use of animals in drug development and testing, and to improve the accuracy and personalisation of medical treatments.
The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) is one of the partners in the UNLOOC project, a public-private collaboration that brings together 51 organisations from 10 European countries. Its aim is to develop innovative Organ-on-Chips technologies to reduce the problems associated with the use of animals in drug development and testing.
The technology to be developed in UNLOOC, which stands for ‘Unlocking data content for Organ-on-Chips’, will not only enable controlled drug testing, but also the modelling of disease pathophysiology using human cells to develop more effective and safer treatments.
UNLOOC is a complex project due to its size and ambitious in terms of its objectives. The involvement of many companies in the sector is key to taking this technology further and turning it into a practical tool for drug development.
Javier Ramón Azcón
IBEC will play a key role as a partner in the UNLOOC project through its Biosensors for Bioengineering group, led by ICREA Research Professor Javier Ramón Azcón. Ramón’s team will develop plasmonic biosensors, a field in which they already have extensive experience and a patent, the Biometasens device. These sensors will make it possible to accurately monitor drug response in real time. In addition, the IBEC team will create three-dimensional models of liver tissue, including models of diseases such as non-alcoholic steatosis, which will facilitate the study of the long-term effects of these pathologies.
‘It is a complex project due to its size and ambitious in terms of its objectives. The involvement of many companies in the sector is key to taking this technology further and turning it into a practical tool for drug development,’ says Ramón.
UNLOOC is part of the Key Digital Technologies Joint Undertaking (KDT JU) programme, which seeks to integrate Organ-on-Chips technology with artificial intelligence to accelerate drug development and promote more personalised and ethical medicine, eliminating the need for animal testing. Of the total budget of €68 million, €14 million comes from the Chips Joint Undertaking, €3 million from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), €18 million from national agencies and €33 million from the project partners.
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