DiseaseX-Chip - Complex Bioengineered Airway- and Airway-Cardio-on-Chip Platforms for the Evaluation of Biologicals and Drugs Targeting SARS2

Numerous clinically relevant aspects of COVID-19 can be assessed neither in ordinary 2D cell culture nor in small animal experiments, constituting a main obstacle for drug development and therapy evaluation. This project will apply bioengineered human organ-on-chip platforms to recapitulate the complex interplay between host tissue and virus to understand the viral pathogenesis. The DiseaseX-Chip consortium will develop SARS2-infectable mini-chips using modern biomanufacturing technologies such as bioprinting and human multi-cellular 3D cultures resembling airways and blood vessels, to advance the understanding of SARS2's pathologies and to enable the fast discovery and on-site evaluation of new antiviral therapies, including biologicals such as convalescent plasma and neutralizing antibodies. These organ-chips shall predict the efficacy of new therapies with higher fidelity, lower costs, and higher throughput relative to state-of-the-art cell culture and/or small animal models. In addition to the immense value for current COVID-19 research, such organ-on-chip infection models would also be rapidly translatable to future diseases.