human Organ and Disease Model Technologies (hDMT)
hDMT as the forum for Organ-on-Chip collaborations between public and private partners.
hDMT is a consortium of engineers, biologists, physicists, chemists, pharmacologists and physicians from Dutch universities, knowledge institutes and medical centers, sharing their expertise, ideas and facilities to develop Organ-on-Chip models. All partners have added value for developing Organ-on-Chip models that capture human physiology, and establish new bioassays to monitor disease, drug responses and tissue toxicity. Many hDMT researchers integrate human stem cells into innovative microfluidic chips with sensitive readouts to predict the effects of different organs to detrimental or beneficial physical or chemical stimuli.
hDMT is a precompetitive, non-profit R&D institute that functions as ‘a laboratory without walls’. A network of companies collaborates with hDMT partners in multidisciplinary independently funded projects. End users and developers consider Organ-on-Chip technology as holding great promise for healthcare and research by universities and pharmaceutical, cosmetic, chemical and food industries. Companies urgently need physiologically relevant human models for testing medicinal- and other compounds. By providing such models, animal testing is expected to be reduced.
hDMT’s ambition is that the models will ultimately be personalised for disease treatment or prevention and that these models will be adopted by end users and regulators and are used in practice. hDMT is leader of the domain Biomedical Production Technologies of the NXTGEN HIGHTECH Growth Fund program, which focuses on the development of hightech equipment for the production and upscaling of innovative products, including Organs-on-Chips. hDMT is also a frontrunner in Europe, founded the European Organ-on-Chip Society EUROoCS as one outcome of an EU-funded project, ORCHID, and also established the Organ-on-Chip Roadmap. EUROoCS facilitates implementation of this roadmap by bringing together relevant experts.
hDMT aims to develop and validate innovative cell culture models of healthy and diseased human tissues based on Organ-on-Chip technology. These Organ-on-Chip models more closely resemble the human body than conventional (animal) models and thus can reduce animal experiments. hDMT also facilitates valorization and implementation of the models by making them available to end users and tailoring them to their needs.
