New York-based biotechnology firm Ochre Bio has opened a dedicated “Liver ICU” laboratory within the Alexandria Centre for Life Sciences, designed to test drug candidates in live human donor livers under near-physiological conditions, the company said. The platform supports multiple simultaneous perfusions of donor organs connected to machines circulating warm, oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood, according to the company.
Ochre Bio claims this is the first human-organ testing platform of its kind, aimed at bridging the gap between pre-clinical animal studies and human clinical trials. The company said the lab will enable data generation from human biology rather than relying solely on animal models.
The company noted that chronic liver disease kills approximately 1.5 million people each year and that liver transplantation remains the only true cure, with only around 40,000 transplants performed globally. According to Ochre Bio, the new lab represents a “clinical trial before the clinical trial” by using live human donor livers for therapeutic testing.
Ochre Bio described its proprietary discovery platform as combining machine-learning analyses of large human datasets, in-house RNA chemistry and live human liver testing to develop RNA-based medicines for under-treated chronic liver diseases. The company is headquartered in Oxford, UK, and operates research labs in New York and Taipei.
