Our Science
Using human 3D models and AI to test drugs where animal models fall short
Drug development is failing late, and expensively
Humans and animals differ in organ structure and drug metabolism. As a result, around nine out of ten candidates that enter clinical trials fail, many of them for efficacy or safety problems that animal studies did not predict.
Ophthalmic studies in rabbits and primates are particularly costly and difficult. In 2025 the U.S. FDA announced a plan to phase down animal testing requirements and to accept NAM data, including organoids and in silico models.
Why organoids are not yet routine
Organoids resemble human tissue, but current tools make them hard to compare and trust.
Loss during media change
Manual pipetting pushes organoids out of their wells, and the losses add up over weeks of culture.
Well-to-well variability
Organoids differ in size and shape from well to well, so the same drug gives different answers.
Subjective readout
Results depend on who looks at the images, and large image sets are scored by hand.
Endpoint-only assays
Viability is measured only at the end, so early quality problems and toxicity signals are missed.
Our approach
Standardize the culture. The Port Pocket separates the pipetting zone from the culture zone, and honeycomb microwells gather cells into organoids of uniform size. Media changes no longer disturb them.
Make the readout objective. Brightfield, live and dead channels are linked for the same well at the same time point. AI screens well quality, quantifies area, boundary change and death signal, and predicts toxicity before the endpoint.
Stay close to patients. Disease models are built from patient-derived ocular cells supplied by our clinical partners.
Why we start with the eye
Diseases of the retina such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy (DR), retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and epiretinal membrane (ERM) are mostly managed by slowing progression or by surgery. Few treatments address their causes, and over 100 million people live with diabetic retinopathy worldwide.
