The proposed innovation uses microfluidic technology to rapidly generate fluid mixtures of drugs with fine increments in their proportions to assist with combination drug development. Although automated pipetting systems and well plates have been the workhorse for primary drug screening where thousands of individual compounds are tested, few, if any, are flexible for screening combination drugs because of the complexity involved in scanning a large number of drug-and-dose combinations. This technology involves injecting plugs of drug solutions into a uniquely designed microfluidic device that allows autonomous mixing and dilution. This approach allows mixing drugs in very fine increments with significantly less consumption of drug samples and reagents.
Development of a microfluidic drop technology for combination drug discovery may accelerate the process of drug screening and discovery of new or combination drugs. It would help to reduce the drug development time cycle and cost as it facilitates fluid mixtures of drugs in very small increments. Outside of the pharmaceutical industry, this technology could also play a role in combinational mixing of consumer products and biomaterials.
This project enabled productization of a new microfluidic technology for testing drugs, developed in the PI's laboratory. The technology is capable of testing drugs using compound volumes that are about one thousand times less than what is currently required in the pharmaceutical industry. Such tiny compound volumes can lead to significant cost savings in the early stages of drug discovery, where tens of thousands of compounds are screened to identify the lead candidate drugs. One hundred interviews were conducted with people in the drug industry to identify the steps that are most time consuming in the drug screening process. Discussions were held with scientists in the pharma industry as well as researchers in contract research organizations and academic high throughput drug screening centers. These discussions led to the identification that reduction in compound volumes is the main value that the technology can bring to the industry. The project led to training of one graduate student and the PI in entrepreneurship and exposed them to the significance of innovation in the commerical arena. The technology has been licensed to a startup company which could generate new jobs and workforce. If the start up company is successful it may lead to translating a new drug screening technology to the market place, enabling significant reduction in drug development costs and also discovering new and effective drugs.
