Tokyo – February 19, 2025 – TOPPAN Holdings Inc. (TYO: 7911) (TOPPAN Holdings) and PhoenixBio Co., Ltd. (PhoenixBio) have announced that they have signed an agreement to provide artificial 3D liver tissue fabricated in vitro using invivoid™, a 3D cell culture technology developed by TOPPAN Holdings.
About the Business Partnership
TOPPAN Holdings has been working on joint development of invivoid™ with Professor Michiya Matsusaki of Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Osaka and is advancing research focused on use in fields such as personalized cancer treatment, drug discovery, and cultured meat.
TOPPAN Holdings and PhoenixBio will collaborate to provide artificial 3D liver tissue in the form of a liver model that combines invivoid™ with PhoenixBio’s PXB-cells®, which are fresh human hepatocytes. The liver model is expected to have applications for the safety evaluation of a range of therapeutics in development by pharmaceutical companies and other organizations.
Background and Aims
In the field of drug discovery, the advancement of cell culture technologies is becoming increasingly important to enable more accurate prediction of the efficacy and safety of pipeline compounds before human clinical trials. However, with conventional 2D cell culture technologies, it has been difficult to accurately reflect the proper biological responses.
The liver model produced by TOPPAN Holdings using invivoid™ has now been demonstrated to have improved translational potential compared to existing culture technologies such as spheroids.1 In addition, the model can easily be shipped, thus providing a ready-to-use shelf solution for customers to test their therapeutics in a physiologically relevant in vitro liver system.
PhoenixBio leverages proprietary technology to obtain fresh, highly functional hepatocytes, which are used for a wide range of purposes in preclinical drug development. PhoenixBio defines its mission as driving growth in the life science field and believes progress in artificial tissue development technologies to be essential for further eliciting the value of high-quality human hepatocytes and thus contributing to the growth of the industry.
The partnership will fuse the expertise of both companies to deliver the liver model produced by TOPPAN Holdings to a broad spectrum of customers.
Features of the 3D Liver Model Produced with invivoid™
The liver model created by using TOPPAN Holdings’ invivoid™ and PhoenixBio’s PXB-cells® is a physiologically relevant liver model that can potentially be used for wide-ranging purposes, including functional food development and DMPK and safety applications in drug discovery.
1) Easy to handle
The liver model maintains its 3D liver structure but, unlike other suspension models, it is attached to the culture dish meaning that it is as easy to work with as conventional 2D culture. Moreover, the thickness of the tissue is controlled between 50 and 100 microns, which makes microscopic evaluation of the living tissue possible.
2) High liver function and bile canaliculus structure with long-term stability
The liver model maintains high gene expression of enzymes that metabolize various types of compounds. The bile canaliculi, via which metabolites are excreted, closely resemble the reticular structures observed in vivo. These functions and features are maintained for at least 30 days without degradation.
3) Enabling high-sensitivity liver toxicity evaluation
The liver model also facilitates high-sensitivity, stable toxicity evaluation of compounds that are harmful to the liver. The system has been shown to detect cholestatic heptotoxicity,2 with 20-fold greater sensitivity than is commonly seen in spheroid culture.
2. Cholestatic hepatotoxicity: A type of harmful side effect in which medicines or other substances inhibit the flow of bile (a fluid that aids digestion of lipids) produced in the liver.
About the TOPPAN Group
Established in Tokyo in 1900, the TOPPAN Group is a leading and diversified global provider committed to delivering sustainable, integrated solutions in fields including printing, communications, security, packaging, décor materials, electronics, and digital transformation. The TOPPAN Group’s global team of more than 50,000 employees offers optimal solutions enabled by industry-leading expertise and technologies to address the diverse challenges of every business sector and society and contribute to the achievement of shared sustainability goals.
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