The regular workshops held by the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) on biology-inspired microphysiological systems (MPS) taking place every four years, have become a reliable measure to assess fundamental scientific, industrial and regulatory trends for translational science in the MPS-field from a bird's eye view. The 2023 workshop participants at that time concluded that the technology as used within academia has matured significantly, underlined by the broad use of MPS and the steadily increasing number of high quality research publications - yet, broad industry adoption of MPS has been slow, despite strong interest. Academic research using MPS primarily aims to accurately recapitulate human biology in MPS-based organ models in areas where traditional models have been lacking key elements of human physiology, thereby enabling breakthrough discoveries for life sciences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrophysiological systems (MPS) and Organs-on-Chips (OoCs) hold significant potential for replicating complex human biological processes . However, their widespread adoption by industry and regulatory bodies depends on effective qualification to demonstrate that these models are fit for purpose. Many models developed in academia are not initially designed with qualification in mind, which limits their future implementation in end-user settings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe success of cellular immunotherapies such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has led to their implementation as a revolutionary treatment option for cancer patients. However, the safe translation of such novel immunotherapies, from non-clinical assessment to first-in-human studies is still hampered by the lack of suitable and models recapitulating the complexity of the human immune system. Additionally, using cells derived from human healthy volunteers in such test systems may not adequately reflect the altered state of the patient's immune system thus potentially underestimating the risk of life-threatening conditions, such as cytokine release syndrome (CRS) following CAR T cell therapy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObject permanence allows infants to interact successfully with objects in the environment. What happens in the human infant brain when objects move in and out of sight? This study used high-density electroencephalography (hdEEG) to record induced oscillatory brain activities in 29 locomotor infants before, during, and after occlusion of a moving object traveling at different speeds. Temporal spectral evolution (TSE) showed that before and after the occlusion event, event-related synchronized (ERS) brain activity was observed, whereas event-related desynchronized (ERD) activity was detected when the car was hidden behind the occluder.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Contact tracing (CT) is a key intervention to contain outbreaks of communicable diseases. During large-scale outbreaks, public health services may lack the resources required to perform CT effectively. One way of mitigating this issue is to shift some of the tasks in CT normally performed by public health services to cases and their contacts, supported by digital tools.
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