Sponsored by Bayer, Novartis, and Takeda, this challenge was taken up by MOAB S.r.l. thanks to the winning of the CRACK-IT grant by NC3Rs with the project: “Development of an in vitro viability and tumorigenicity index for genome-edited hHSPCs with the MOAB bioreactor”.
Some blood-related monogenic diseases like sickle cell anaemia and haemophilia could be treated with gene-edited human Hematopoietic Stem cells (hHSPC).
Gene editing of hHSPCs using CRISPR-like precision molecular tools offers a high level of site-specific gene correction, but it could lead to off-target deletions and mutations, some of which may have oncogenic potential.
In vivo studies to evaluate the safety of such therapies are a regulatory requirement, but they are prolonged, inconvenient, use large numbers of animals, and they do not always guarantee safety or efficacy in humans.
MOAB is the first Miniaturized Optically Accessible Bioreactor empowered by a multi-chamber dynamic cell culture system, developed for pharmaceutical trials of gene-edited cells and long-term engineered 3D tissue growth.
Our platform is patented, and its applications are growing day by day, in the hands of our users.
Our bioreactor is developed with three independent perfusion lines with optically accessible micro-chambers mounted on a microscopy slide, allowing triplicated experiment trials for each device.
MOAB chambers can be equipped with a wide variety of scaffolds, providing the possibility to develop a more realistic 3D in-vitro tool model to test pharmaceuticals, compared to the 2D flat dish in widespread use.
MOAB is user-friendly to operators like a chambered cover glass, but at the same time allows to culture live 3D tissue-equivalents instead of standard flat 2D plates.
Each MOAB chamber is 100% optically accessible through microscopic inspection and fluorescence analysis thanks to the integrated glass slide.
Fabricated in transparent polycarbonate by injection moulding, MOAB can significantly reduce the time to market and costs of newly developed drugs and biopharmaceuticals.
MOAB was incorporated in 2019 as a spin-off of Politecnico di Milano. The company traces its roots to the laboratory of Prof. Manuela T. Raimondi, awarded with three European Research Council grants.
As a results of 10 years of development in nanoengineered stem cells niches, microfluidic bioreactors, and miniaturized windows for imaging in live animals, MOAB is now an industrial product.
Since 2019 MOAB has been used by several customers with different goals in a large variety of scientific fields, from neural cells to lymph nodes, from regenerative medicine to gene editing.