Development of a platform for cell culturing in microfluidic devices

Abstract

Bioptamers is a biotech start-up conceived in 2018 by two graduate students from the University of São Paulo under meetings at the Synthetic Biology Club (Synbio Brasil). The main purpose of Bioptamers is to optimize the treatment of cancer patients through personalized precision therapies. To achieve this, the company explores the development of molecules named aptamers, which are employed as ligands against specific targets. Also known as "synthetic antibodies", aptamers present biotechnological advantages especially due to their synthetic nature and high level of stability. Such characteristics provide faster and more cost-effective production and characterization steps for therapeutic application, being the scaling process considerably simpler when compared to biological products such as recombinant proteins, monoclonal antibodies, cellular and gene therapies. In common with monoclonal antibodies, aptamers present similar affinity and specificity against its targets (with the order from nano to picomolar), as well as versatility for chemical modifications, thus allowing conjugation with fluorophores aiming to diagnostic methods or delivery of therapeutic cargos, such as radio, chemo and immunotherapies. In this scenario, Bioptamers has been working on the production of a microfluidic device (Chip) coupled to an autonomous platform for cell culture. By modelling the patient as an organism, aptamers will be developed thereafter conveying personalisation to the patient's tumor molecular signature with also accurate precision towards that tumor by avoiding aptamers affinity for patient's organs that are adversely affected during conventional chemotherapy. To this end, the founding partners are fundraising to demonstrate the viability of the tumor and para-tumor cell culture platform using the microfluidic devices. Through the present project, Bioptamers looks for the development and national incorporation of the technology. (AU)