An industry-wide cooperation program for preclinical models of AI-supported drug development was announced at the end of May at ITF World 2025 in Antwerp, Belgium. This was announced by the cooperation partners Merck, a chemical and pharmaceutical company headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany, and the research and innovation center for nanoelectronics and digital technologies imec from Leuven, Belgium.
The aim of the resulting platform for microphysiological systems (MPS) is to increase efficiency in drug research and development, improve the predictive accuracy of next-generation preclinical models and gradually reduce the number of animal experiments. The aim is to combine organoid biology models with semiconductor hardware and integrate specific biosensor and microfluidic functions. The approach should enable scientists to quickly gain relevant insights into the condition of individual organs through to a networked system of several organs and thus pave the way for more precise and efficient drug development processes.
A jointly developed modular system is at the heart of the partnership in the area of hardware development. Standardized interfaces will enable customer-specific configurations from Merck's portfolio of induced pluripotent stem cells and patient-derived organoid models. In combination with imec's expertise in the integration of sensor technology, customers should receive better quality data through in-situ measurements without markers, which will improve the reproducibility of cell cultures. This should enable more reliable predictions and real-time identification of human organ responses to drugs and chemical stimuli with applications in preclinical safety, toxicity studies and DMPK (Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics). In addition, the application should be simple and customer-friendly and data consistency should be guaranteed across different test setups. This standardization will enable comparable and reproducible results throughout the pharmaceutical industry in order to further shorten the time to market for drugs and reduce costs. Other biotech and pharmaceutical companies are also invited to join the collaboration to further improve MPS models.
