A NOVEL HUMAN NEUROVASCULAR UNIT MICROPHYSIOLOGICAL SYSTEM FOR PREDICTIVE REAL-TIME AND LABEL-FREE LEUKOCYTE MIGRATION ASSAYS

Drug development is costly and complex, often limited by the poor translatability of animal models. To address this, Swiss-based biotech company MesenFlow Technologies has developed a microscopy platform to quantify leukocyte migration using fluidic chips cultured with human vascular endothelial cells and proprietary AI bio-imaging analysis. This in vitro method represents a scalable, cost-effective alternative to animal testing in research on chronic inflammation and cancer.
To further enhance the physiological relevance of its assays, MesenFlow partnered with the Tissue Engineering group at HEPIA to develop a novel microphysiological system (MPS) that models the human neurovascular unit (NVU), a key structure affected in neuroinflammatory diseases, using progenitor stem cell and induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS)- derived neural tissue and brain endothelial cells (iBMECs).
The MPS features chambers separated by a porous membrane that allow co-culture of human neural tissue with iBMECs, enabling tissue-influenced leukocyte migration under flow conditions. In co-culture conditions, neural tissue expresses neuronal and glial markers while iBMECs express tight junction proteins Zonula Occludens 1 (ZO-1) and Claudin 5. Importantly, our generated iBMECs support leukocyte migration, which can be quantified using MesenFlow’s integrated platform.
Our findings demonstrate that the integration of MesenFlow’s AI-powered migration analysis with a physiologically relevant NVU MPS provides a robust, human-based platform for studying leukocyte dynamics in neuroinflammatory contexts. Altogether, our data indicate that this approach may provide pharmaceutical researchers with a scalable new approach methodology (NAM) for drug discovery targeting neurological disorders and chronic inflammation.