Systemic Bio wins SLAS Innovation Award 2025

Despite advancements with models such as spheroids, organoids, and organ-chips, and in silico strategies, a persistent challenge during the past two decades has been the generation of human-relevant, reproducible preclinical data at scale. Traditional animal models yield a preclinical failure of 85-95% due to intrinsic differences from human pathophysiology, while overly simplistic in vitro models struggle to capture the complexity of human biological processes crucial for assessing therapeutic safety and efficacy.

In her presentation ‘’h-VIOS: A human-relevant drug discovery and development platform using bioprinted human tissues’, Pereira explained how h-VIOS organ-on-chip technology from Texas-based Systemic Bio Inc improves preclinical satety test and toxicity assessment. Systemic Bio Inc, a subsidiary of 3D printing specialist 3D Systems Inc,  has succeeded in using 3D printing to produce vascularised hydrogels at scale that are compatible with numerous cell types such as healthy and diseased cells, stem cells and human primary cells (hepatocytes).

“The h-VIOS™ platform delivers bioprinted organ-chips that enable therapeutic delivery through endothelialised vasculatures into complex, three-dimensional tissues,” Pereira stressed. “This modular and customisable system enables the generation of multimodal data, ranging from high-content imaging to transcriptomics.”

Pereira showed data demonstrating that parallelised  h-VIOS organ-on-chips can be used to determine drug-induced vascular injury (DIVI) and drug-induced liver injury (DILI) as the organ-on-chips mimics essential function of a human liver. In an ISO-7 clean room facility in Houston, which is subject to a quality management system, Systemic Bio can produce thousands of tissue models that replicate human organ systems with high precision. Thus, the platform represents a significant advance in preclinical testing and supports collaboration with leading pharmaceutical companies.

Pereira emphasised at the award ceremony in San Diego that the award is a validation of the transformative potential of Systemic Bio h-VIOS platform.  “This recognition reflects the hard work and ingenuity of our team and underscores the transformative power of our platform in driving innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. By providing more accurate and predictive tools, we aim to accelerate the development of safer and more effective therapies for patients worldwide.” Compared to conventional tests on animal models, h-VIOS offers significantly better results in terms of predicting adverse drug reactions, as the chip mimics human physiology much better and also helps to reduce both time and costs in drug development.

The conference organiser, the Society for Laboratory Automation & Screening, had nominated the following presentations as finalists for the Innovation Award in addition to the one by Taci Pereira:

Tori Ellison, Ph.D., National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences: a 3D bioprint skin assay platform for performing high-throughout screens and identifying potent HSV antiviral agents (relevant models for drug screening)

Keisuke Goda, University of Tokyo; Sunghoon Kwon, Seoul National University: Intelligent image-activated cell sorting and more (AI-driven nanotechnology)

Nitin Joshi, Brigham and Women’s Hospital – Harvard Medical School: Deciphering nano-bio interactions in the brain for precise delivery of gene therapies (New Platforms)

Justin Langerman, UCLA: Using nanovials to associate secretions and transcriptomes of single cells with SEC-seq and capture the discrete effects of cell-cell interactions (spatial omics),

María Bueno Álvez, Scilife Lab, KTH Royal Institute of Technology: Comprehensive Blood Proteome Profiling for Pan-Cancer and Pan-Disease Biomarker Discovery (Biomarker translational research)

Babak Mahjour, MIT, Ideation and Evaluation of Novel Multicomponent Reactions via Mechanistic Network Analysis and Automation (AI-supported experimentation)

Caitlin Mills, Harvard Medical School: Drug Response Phenotyping and Target Deconvolution via Dye Drop Multiplexed Imaging (Assays for High Content Screening)

Ritu Raman, MIT: Tissue engineering high-throughput modelling of the neuromuscular system (translation of complex in vitro models)

Sunghoon Kwon, Seoul National University: AI-integrated spatial omics as an innovative tool for biomarker discovery: from bench to real world (AI-driven microsystems)

This year’s SLAS 2025 International ended with the presentation of the SLAS Innovation Award with 6700 visitors and 409 companies. SLAS 2026 will take place on February 07-11, 2026 in Boston. Prior to that, the Society for Laboratory Automation & Screening (SLAS) is organizing the 4th SLAS Europe in Hamburg, Germany from 20-22 May 2025.

Watch out! Deadline

An important deadline for young start-ups who would like to present their company and platform to the automationl community in Hamburg with financial support from the SLAS program Innovation AveNEW and apply for the SLAS Ignite Award endowed with US$5000 is February 24, 2025. Companies that have fresh products on the market or want to launch them can apply for the New Product Award or – if they have already been on the market for some time – for the SLAS Innovation Award endowed with US$10,000.

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