Nuvitro Biosciences is dedicated to providing organotypic slice culture (OSC) solutions for preclinical drug development in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry.
The problem in drug development
Currently the process of drug discovery and development is time-consuming and expensive. It has been estimated that launching a new drug on the market takes on the average 12 years and $800 million. While the drug discovery stages can cost $15 million, with the cost of lead optimization accounting for an estimated $12 million, the real financial burden of launching a new drug on the market occurs during the drug development stages. For example, an estimated $12 million is needed for preclinical development and a minimum of $200 million is needed to complete the clinical trials. More than often the problem the biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are facing is that too many potential drug candidates are generated by high throughput screening, it is financially impossible to evaluate them all in the drug development stages. Thus, it becomes obvious that a stringent screening technology is required to facilitate finding the best drug candidates for the drug development stages.<br><br><font size="3"><b>OSC solutions</b></font><br>
OSC allows potential drug candidates to be evaluated in a tissue-like setting in which the interactions among various cell types (i.e. neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes) are preserved, thus providing a screening environment that is more predictive of the <i>in vivo</i> situation than cell cultures. Importantly, OSC provides a cost-effective secondary screen of potential drug candidates which significantly decreases the need for costly animal testing and expedites the over all drug development process.
