Indian-origin researcher developing vessel-chip for pharmaceutical drug testing

Indian-origin researcher Dr Abhishek Jain, from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University in the US, and his team are developing a vessel-chip technology for more personalised pharmaceutical drug testing. 

Jain’s lab, which also has Dr Tanmay Mathur in the team, received a grant from Texas A&M Innovation to continue developing an advanced vessel-chip deployment platform for large-scale pharmaceutical testing.

According to him, this system can be used from discovery all the way to the translational pipeline, where you can immediately initiate informed clinical trials of venous, vascular and hematological diseases and know what the outcome on an actual human might be.

“You can fine-tune your clinical trials or reduce the length of the clinical trials and make them much more efficient,” he said in a university statement.

Jain and his lab have focused their research efforts on creating blood and lymphatic vessel-chips.

These are tissue-engineered microfluidic devices that mimic human circulatory systems and provide a platform for preclinical drug discovery.

His work has culminated in the founding of a startup company with his current and past trainees.

The Texas A&M Innovation Translational Investment Fund (TIF) grant will help build confidence in customers by ensuring that the vessel-chips are reliable, reproducible and automated for ease of use, according to researchers.

Jain said the momentum offered by the TIF also allowed him to hire Dr. Tanmay Mathur, a previous graduate student of Jain’s, to help make the startup successful.