SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Curi Bio, a leading developer of human stem cell-based platforms for drug discovery, today announced the Mantarray™ platform for human-relevant 3D engineered muscle tissue (EMT) analysis. Curi’s Mantarray platform enables the discovery, safety, and efficacy testing of new therapeutics by providing parallel analysis of 3D EMTs with adult human-like functional profiles. By providing drug developers human-relevant tissue-specific biosystems in the preclinical stage of drug development, Curi aims to help pharmaceutical partners develop safer and more effective therapeutics in less time, at lower cost. Curi Bio is currently partnering with several leading pharmaceutical companies to accelerate the development of the Mantarray platform and to apply it to drug discovery and development projects.

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A 3D engineered muscle tissue in Curi’s Mantarray platform. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Cardiovascular diseases often involve a gradual loss of cardiac contractile strength and function, ultimately leading to heart failure. Cardiomyocytes derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC-CMs) offer a promising route to model the contractile deficiencies seen in the hearts of patients with cardiovascular diseases. However, 2D cell models lack the physiologically relevant structure and function of 3D models. As a result, 3D engineered muscle tissues have been growing in use in the drug development industry. Yet existing 3D EMT solutions are complex and low throughput, often relying on laborious serial optical imaging of each tissue to measure contractility.

Curi will make the Mantarray platform available to pharmaceutical and research customers as a standalone bioscience instrument together with multiwell consumable plates for casting and assaying EMTs. Curi will also offer service contracts and partnerships leveraging the Mantarray technology for applications in drug discovery, disease modeling, and safety and efficacy screening. Curi’s Mantarray platform leverages a proprietary, label-free, non-optical, electromagnetic measurement system for direct contractility assessment of up to 24 parallel iPSC-derived 3D engineered muscle tissues simultaneously. With the Mantarray platform, scientists can achieve clinically relevant functional measurements of human iPSC-derived engineered muscle tissue contractility, with a throughput and reproducibility compatible with higher-throughput screening workflows. Mantarray brings clinically relevant functional data into the earliest stages of preclinical testing of new medicines.

Leveraging human iPSC-derived cells, Mantarray 3D tissues can be used to create high-fidelity models of human diseases. For example, Mantarray 3D EMTs can be gene-edited with a CRISPR/Cas9 system to model human diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy and various cardiomyopathies. Multi-modal Mantarray data show enhanced disease stratification providing researchers with more physiological data for the discovery and validation of new therapeutics.

The Mantarray platform also provides a breakthrough cardiotoxicity safety and efficacy testing platform with novel magnetic detection of drug-induced contractile changes. The magnetic detection approach can measure both acute and chronic drug responses. Drugs can be measured on the order of seconds to minutes with enough sensitivity to measure dose-response-like behavior. Alternatively, longer-term chronic experiments can be performed over the course of days. Applications include acute and chronic structural cardiotoxicity evaluation.

“At Curi Bio, our goal is to provide researchers with innovative human-relevant cells, systems, and data to accelerate the discovery of new medicines,” said Curi CEO Michael Cho. “By providing drug developers unprecedented access to clinically-relevant preclinical models that more closely recapitulate human cardiac and skeletal muscle tissue, Curi is closing the gap between preclinical results and clinical impact.”

Dr. Nicholas Geisse, Chief Science Officer of Curi Bio, will present Curi’s Mantarray platform and Curi’s recently announced ComboMat platform in a presentation at the Discovery on Target 2020 Virtual Conference.

Event: Discovery on Target 2020
Date: Thursday, September 17, 2020
Time: 11:15 AM EDT
Session: Disease Modeling
Title: Structural Maturation in the Development of hiPSC-Cardiomyocyte Models for Preclinical Safety, Efficacy, and Discovery

Curi’s Mantarray platform integrates proprietary methods and IP exclusively licensed to Curi Bio by the University of Washington.

To learn more about how the Mantarray platform can improve the predictive power of 3D EMTs, or about Curi’s other human-relevant preclinical platform technologies and services, please reach out at www.curibio.com/contact.

About Curi Bio

Curi Bio’s preclinical discovery platform combines human stem cells, systems, and data to accelerate the discovery of new medicines. The Curi Engine is a seamless, bioengineered platform that integrates human iPSC-derived cell models, tissue-specific biosystems, and AI/ML-enabled phenotypic screening data. Curi’s suite of human stem cell-based products and services enable scientists to build more mature and predictive human iPSC-derived tissues—with a focus on cardiac, musculoskeletal, and neuromuscular models—for the discovery, safety testing, and efficacy testing of new drugs in development. By offering drug developers an integrated preclinical platform comprising highly predictive human stem cell models to generate clinically-relevant data, Curi is closing the gap between preclinical data and human results, accelerating the discovery and development of safer, more effective medicines.

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