Current oncology preclinical models often fail to replicate the native tumor microenvironment (TME), leading to a high clinical trial failure rate due to a lack of drug efficacy in humans. MISO Chip addresses this by offering a platform for ex vivo testing of anticancer drugs on live human tumor tissues, preserving the native TME. This approach generates a unique dataset that integrates patient-matched clinical data with explant responses, enabling the discovery of predictive biomarkers and optimal drug combination strategies. MISO Chip aims to differentiate itself from other models by leveraging spatial biology technologies to identify key drivers of resistance and predictive biomarkers within the TME, ultimately improving clinical success rates.
What is the problem?
Most preclinical models in oncology lack the native interactions between cancer cells and immune and fibroblast cells . Biotech companies enter clinical trial without addressing key aspect of their drug mechanism of action(MOA) and don't account for the native human TME in their efficacy study. The pain and uncertainty is even more important for drugs that have a MOA related to the TME. A downstream effect is a very poor success rate in clinical trial (3-5%), that is mainly due of the lack of efficacy in humans. Between lead optimization and phase I clinical trials, there's a major unmet need for preclinical solutions that allow ex vivo testing on human-relevant tumor models and identify potent drivers of efficacy or resistance.
What is their solution?
MISO Chip developed a tumor explant platform that enables the ex vivo testing of anticancer drugs on live human tumor tissues with their native TME preserved. By capturing patient-matched clinical data with their explant response to standard of care drugs and novel drugs, MISO Chip is building a unique data set to capture how the TME evolves under different therapeutic pressures. This data set will allow researchers to discover predictive biomarkers unseen by genomic-only precision medicine and identify promising drug combination strategies to increase efficacy in the clinic. MISO Chip allows biotech companies to test their drug on human tumor (fee for service model) and compare their results against known drugs or drugs with similar MOA in a large diverse patient population (Technology access fee).
