BLOC project

Technology and objective

Recent advances in tissue engineering offer new approaches to metabolic disease modelling and drug discovery by providing biologically relevant models of tissues and organs in vitro integrated with sensing technology. This technology has the potential to revolutionise the pharmaceutical industry by enabling reliable and high predictive in vitro testing of chemical compounds. The capability to miniaturise microfluidic systems and advanced tissue fabrication procedures have enabled researchers to create multiple 3D in vitro models with a high degree of control over experimental variables for high-content screening applications. BLOC objective is to develop a benchtop spectrometer based on magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging using dynamic nuclear polarisation (DNP-MR). The integration of this technology with tissue engineering systems will be applied to monitor disease and evaluate responses to different stimulus. As a proof-of-concept, this project will fabricate a biomimetic model composed of liver spheroids and pancreatic islets and develop the necessary DNP-MR hardware and software to study metabolic diseases.