Modelling hepatocellular carcinoma microenvironment phenotype to evaluate drug efficacy.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the third most common cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Treating HCC is challenging because of the poor drug effectiveness and the lack of tools to predict patient responses. To resolve these issues, we established a patient-centric spheroid model using HepG2, TWNT-1, and THP-1 co-culture, that mimics HCC phenotype.

Uncovering the mechanism of troglitazone-mediated idiosyncratic drug-induced liver injury with individual-centric models.

Idiosyncratic drug-induced liver injury is a rare and unpredictable event. Deciphering its initiating-mechanism is a hard task as its occurrence is individual dependent. Thus, studies that utilize models that are not individual-centric might drive to a general mechanistic conclusion that is not necessarily true.

Exploiting the predictive power of educated spheroids to detect immune-mediated idiosyncratic drug-induced liver injury: the case of troglitazone.

Idiosyncratic drug-induced liver injury (iDILI) is a major concern in drug development because its occurrence is unpredictable. Presently, iDILI prediction is a challenge, and cell toxicity is observed only at concentrations that are much higher than the therapeutic doses in preclinical models. Applying a proprietary cell educating technology, we developed a person-dependent spheroid system that contains autologous educated immune cells that can detect iDILI risk at therapeutic concentrations.