Article written by Guilhem Velvé Casquillas
CEO Elvesys and Long Long Life
Contact: 172 rue de Charonne 75011 Paris
ELVESYS is a private microfluidics research center which takes part in or fosters the most promising scientific research linked to microfluidics. Although we take part in various research projects such as artificial photosynthesis, pathogen detection and stem cell differentiation, the ultimate goal of our entrepreneurial adventure is to accelerate anti-aging research. We are convinced that microfluidics could accelerate anti-aging scientific research. Research in that field is limited by our capacity to test new aging treatments on people, as well as by the quantity of combinations that must be tested before finding the right combination for a treatment. In this page, we will quickly explain how we think that microfluidics can help the science in the field.
Beyond the science and the purely technical side of microfluidics, the Elvesys teams aim to help researchers who fight against aging to fund their research projects by any available means.
This includes:
Funding anti-aging research: ask for funding for international research projects & research consortiums Accelerating anti-aging research: develop custom microfluidic instruments to parallelize experiments and quickly show results with medical relevance Increasing the impact factor of anti-aging research by developing diagnosis tools with a low level of technology readiness to show the medical relevance of our partners’ discoveries Increasing visibility of anti-aging research in the world among scientists and the public through articles in the press and online.
Much research is currently ongoing in order to understand how to slow down human aging.
There are many leads today in the fight against aging, such as:
For Elvesys, here is how microfluidics can accelerate anti-aging research:
Miniaturization and parallelization made possible with microfluidics could allow to detect a great number of combinations of new therapeutic molecules in an automated manner, on cell cultures in a finely controlled environment.
Microfluidics allow for a thorough control of the cell culture environment (study at a scale of the individual cell, 3D cell culture, mechanical control of cell shape, physico-chemical properties of the environment, shear stress, substrate rigidity, temperature gradient…) which makes it the ideal candidate for stem cell differentiation and growth control.
Today, one of the main scientific limitations to the fast-paced progress made in this field is the impossibility to quickly test the effect of a new idea or molecule on humans and to clearly estimate its impact when it comes to increasing human lifespan.
To develop microfluidic cell culture systems to best simulate human organs by cultivating interconnected re-differentiated pluripotent induced stem cells. Those multi-organs-on-chip are the subject of many research projects. Once we have established a relevant metrology on the age of a cell, an organ or an organism, these humans-on-chip could be used in the following way:
STEP 1 Humans-on-chip with an integrated aging metrology could allow to identify new ideas on aging causes, or to test out new molecules or treatments by measuring in real time their effect on cell aging for each organ, at a fundamental level and with a very low level of technology readiness.
STEP 2 These multi-organs-on-chip could, if highly parallelized and automated, allow to test out a great number of existing combinations for future gene therapies that would work on a great number of genes to fight against aging.
STEP 3 These multi-organs-on-chip could also allow to test out a number of drugs in pre-clinical testing without ethical limitations and could even replace one day long, costly and ethically tricky animal testing.
STEP 4 Finally, organs-on-chip adapted to individualized medicine could allow to cultivate humans-on-chip with each patient’s stem cells. It would allow to create and test out the effect of anti-aging treatments on organs-on-chip specific to each patient before treatment.
To learn more about anti-aging research, you can visit the Long Long Life website.
Article by Dr Guilhem Velve Casquillas, former researcher in microfluidics at the CNRS and former researcher in cellular biologie at the Curie Institute. He co-founded and directs the Elvesys Microfluidic Innovation Center.
You have a research project regarding human aging, or you are interested in doing business with Elvesys? Feel free to contact us, we are open to all discussions!
E-mail : contact@elvesys.com – ask for Guilhem Velvé Casquillas
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Do you want tips on how to best set up your microfluidic experiment? Do you need inspiration or a different angle to take on your specific problem? Well, we probably have an application note just for you, feel free to check them out!
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The liver is involved in more than 300 vital functions, but is mainly known for being part of the digestive tract, where it has the extremely important role of metabolizing both xenobiotics and nutrients (carbohydrates and lipids).
A heart-on-chip is a microfluidic chip reproducing the mechanisms of a heart, in order to test medicine quickly and observe the reaction of heart cells. Great care is given to mimic the mechanics of a heart in an artificial structure, lined with live heart cells.
While many animal models have been used to study lung diseases, they lack sufficient similarity with human systems, leaving gaps in what is possible in animal-based platforms.
The lung is the main organ of respiration whose function is to facilitate gas exchange in and out of the blood stream.
It could be extremely interesting to build a human-on-chip that will model the interactions between different organs, but it is also essential to develop simulations of tissue-tissue interfaces and more generally of local organ behavior.
Multi-organs on chip could also allow us to witness the side effects of certain drugs on different organs, not limited to those that the treatment targets.
Since 2012, more and more people, companies or lab, have worked on the organ-on-a-chip. These cell cultures can, thanks to microfluidics, mimic the cells microenvironment of the human body. Thus, these chips could become wonderful search accelerators and we can hope that, in ten years, they could replace the animal testing. Finally, organs on chips could lead us to personalized medicine.
Cell culture consists in growing cells in an artificial environment in order to study their behavior in response to their environment[1]. Different kinds of cell cultures can be found nowadays, and some would be more suited than others depending on its properties and applications.
Organs on chips are microengineered biomimetic systems that replicate key functions of living organs. They provide a more accurate model than conventional cell culture for simulating complex cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions.
Organ-on-chip companies developping innovative technologies
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