Toxicology on a chip

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of California-Berkeley, and Solidus Biosciences have developed a biochip, called the MetaChip, which can analyse drug candidates for toxicity and eliminate harmful ones before they advance to pre-clinical stages.

Now beginning the second phase of funding for the US National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported project, researchers are working to optimise the technology for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The researchers are working to bring the MetaChip to market within a year.

“Compounds can be screened early, quickly, and effectively by the MetaChip to prevent toxic drugs from getting through the discovery process, being put on the market, and then getting recalled, such as we’ve seen with several high-profile cases recently,” says Jonathan Dordick, the Howard P. Isermann ’42 Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer.

“Weeding out toxic compounds earlier would also allow pharmaceutical companies to evaluate more compounds and more efficiently identify those that are most likely to become successful drugs,” adds Douglas Clark of the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of California-Berkeley.