Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

Roche, Mimetas Partner to Develop Disease Models for Drug Discovery

NEW YORK – Roche and Mimetas, a Dutch developer of organ-on-a-chip-based disease models and technology, said on Tuesday that they have partnered to develop human disease models to characterize novel drug compounds in inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD, and hepatitis B virus, or HBV, infections.

Under the terms of the agreement, Mimetas is eligible to receive an unspecified upfront payment and milestone payments from Roche.

Mimetas will be responsible for developing tissue-based disease models and assays in its organ-on-a-chip platform, OrganoPlate. Roche will have access to the technology, the disease models, and the resulting data, as well as an option to exclusively license specific disease models and assays for use in drug discovery.

"The collaboration with Roche leverages our ongoing focus on developing predictive, phenotypic models, preceded by numerous successful projects over the last eight years," Mimetas CEO Jos Joore said in a statement. "We will leverage our disease modeling expertise in our OrganoPlate platform to gain novel insights in IBD and HBV."

James Sabry, global head of pharma partnering at Roche, also noted that the models have the potential to "improve our understanding of disease biology and transform our drug discovery process."

The Scan

Genetic Testing Approach Explores Origins of Blastocyst Aneuploidy

Investigators in AJHG distinguish between aneuploidy events related to meiotic missegregation in haploid cells and those involving post-zygotic mitotic errors and mosaicism.

Study Looks at Parent Uncertainties After Children's Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Diagnoses

A qualitative study in EJHG looks at personal, practical, scientific, and existential uncertainties in parents as their children go through SCID diagnoses, treatment, and post-treatment stages.

Antimicrobial Resistance Study Highlights Key Protein Domains

By screening diverse versions of an outer membrane porin protein in Vibrio cholerae, researchers in PLOS Genetics flagged protein domain regions influencing antimicrobial resistance.

Latent HIV Found in White Blood Cells of Individuals on Long-Term Treatments

Researchers in Nature Microbiology find HIV genetic material in monocyte white blood cells and in macrophages that differentiated from them in individuals on HIV-suppressive treatment.