Setup of human liver-chips integrating 3D models, microwells and a standardized microfluidic platform as proof-of-concept study to support drug evaluation.

Human 3D liver microtissues/spheroids are powerful models to study drug-induced liver injury (DILI) but the small number of cells per spheroid limits the models' usefulness to study drug metabolism. In this work, we scale up the number of spheroids on both a plate and a standardized organ-chip platform by factor 100 using a basic method which requires only limited technical expertise. We successfully generated up to 100 spheroids using polymer-coated microwells in a 96-well plate (= liver-plate) or organ-chip (= liver-chip).

Discovery of a Potent, Orally Bioavailable PI4KIIIβ Inhibitor (UCB9608) Able To Significantly Prolong Allogeneic Organ Engraftment in Vivo.

The primary target of a novel series of immunosuppressive 7-piperazin-1-ylthiazolo[5,4- d]pyrimidin-5-amines was identified as the lipid kinase, PI4KIIIβ. Evaluation of the series highlighted their poor solubility and unwanted off-target activities. A medicinal chemistry strategy was put in place to optimize physicochemical properties within the series, while maintaining potency and improving selectivity over other lipid kinases.

Comparative analysis of CYP3A heteroactivation by steroid hormones and flavonoids in different in vitro systems and potential in vivo implications.

A systematic analysis of the heteroactivation of CYP3A-mediated carbamazepine 10,11-epoxidation has been investigated in three different in vitro systems, namely recombinant CYP3A4 and CYP3A5, human liver microsomes (HLMs) and cryopreserved human hepatocytes. The effect of 10 endogenous steroids and flavonoids was studied over a range of substrate and effector concentrations. A novel heteroactivation model was used to obtain the parameters EC(200) (concentration of effector required to produce 200% control) and heteroactivation ratio (the ratio of maximum observed reaction velocity to control).