An award-winning start-up, co-founded by researchers from the University of Waterloo and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, aims to significantly speed up drug development with an “eye on a chip”.

Eyenova Biotech, which recently won a gold medal and a China Association of Inventions award at the fourth Asia Exhibition of Innovations and Inventions in Hong Kong, is developing the eye on a chip as a preclinical testing platform that replicates the complexity of the eye’s cellular environment.

This would allow researchers to perform multiple tests at once, saving time, costs, and animal testing.

Traditionally, drug testing occurs in three stages. Extensive laboratory cellular testing occurs in the first stage to evaluate the efficacy of candidate drugs, before moving to animal testing, then human clinical trials.

“Our goal is using a combination of microfluidics, cell culture, and 3D printing to create a device that mimics the human eye in a miniature form so we can do high-throughput screening of drugs and other new products,” Chief Technology Officer Dr Brandon Ho said in an article on the University of Waterloo’s website.1

Though lab-on-a-chip platforms have been developed for other organs, the eye has not been well represented in this area to date.

The company’s first-generation device is designed to model dry eye disease, a common and increasingly prevalent condition that can significantly reduce quality of life for patients.

“Our device creates a flow that simulates the movement of tear fluid over the cornea and mimics the actual physiological conditions of the human eye,” said Dr Liping Zhou, Eyenova Biotech’s Chief Scientific Officer.

In 2022, the United States Food and Drug Administration introduced a major policy change, eliminating the requirement for animal testing if advanced in-vitro models are used. This is part of what spurred the development of Eyenova Biotech.

Reference available at mivision.com.au.