Organ-on-a-Chip Network and Emulate Proof of Concept Awards

Starting in 2020, the UK Organ-on-a-Chip Network and Emulate, Inc funded a Proof of Concept (PoC) Award scheme for members of the Network. The PoC awards were developed to enable academics to generate preliminary data to support future grant applications and further use of the Emulate platform. The initiative, generously supported by Emulate, consisted of approximately £100k of funding which was used to support multiple research projects and provide access to £150,000 of state-of-the-art organ-chip technology available at The Queen Mary+Emulate Organs-on-Chips Centre.

Emulate’s platform has been adopted by top biopharmaceutical companies, by U.S. governmental agencies, and by academic research centres worldwide. Researchers may develop new chip models or use Emulates current optimised organ models which include: Liver, Proximal Tubule Kidney, Brain, Lung, Colon Intestine and Duodenum Intestine. The PoC Awards provide an exciting opportunity for members of the UK Organ-on-a-chip Network to engage with this technology. 

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This scheme has operated 3 initial PoC funding rounds providing the following.

  • 6 Blank Emulate Organ-Chips
  • Hands-on training using the Emulate Organ-chip platform 
  • Support to refine the proposed proof of concept experiment
  • Centre Scientist/Technician time to run the proof of concept experiment at the Queen Mary+Emulate Organs-on-Chips Centre

Each project PI was required to pay the access fee of c£600 which covered access to the Centre for the hand-on training and associated administration costs and some basic consumables. 

In the final round we wanted to fund a single larger, more comprehensive PoC study and provid this with: 

  • 18 Blank Emulate Organ-Chips  and support to refine the proposed experimental plan