iXCells Biotechnologies (“iXCells”), a leading provider of human cell-based solutions and custom iPSC services, today announced it has entered an international collaboration with Rosebud Biosciences (“Rosebud”), Kantify, and Incite to evaluate off-target chemotherapeutic toxicities in patient-specific organoids. Building on iXCells’ recent partnership with Rosebud and funded by Incite, the project will initially focus on predicting toxicity in heart, liver, and kidney tissue models, to develop personalized, multi-organ toxicity profiles for novel chemotherapies.
During the collaboration, iXCells will reprogram peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) isolated from the blood of a patient with liposarcoma, a rare, malignant cancer that originates in fatty tissues, into human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). Rosebud, an innovator in organoid development and complex 3D biology, will then differentiate these hiPSCs into heart, liver, and kidney organoids using its industrialized organoid platform and perform the drug toxicity studies on investigational chemotherapeutic compounds supplied by Kantify, a Belgian company using a novel AI discovery engine called Sapian to discover novel targets and drugs for underserved diseases.
Toxicity will be quantified through longitudinal imaging and machine learning driven analysis, cardiac activity measurements, live/dead viability assays, tissue-specific immunocytochemistry, and multiparametric readouts of structural and functional organ injury.
Unforeseen off-target toxicity in critical organs remains one of the most significant risks for cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, with injury to the heart, liver, or kidneys being a leading cause of clinical trial failures.2 By assessing chemotherapeutic toxicities directly in organoids developed from a patient’s own cells, the collaboration will generate personalized toxicity profiles to guide therapeutic decision making.
Steve Smith, CEO of iXCells Biotechnologies, said:
“We are excited to be collaborating with Rosebud, Kantify, and Incite on this joint initiative to demonstrate how hiPSC technologies and organoid systems can transform precision toxicology. By starting from a patient’s own cells, we gain unprecedented insight into off-target toxicity, one of the biggest challenges in developing safer and more effective cancer therapeutics.”
Kitch Wilson, MD, PhD, CEO and Co-Founder of Rosebud Biosciences added:
“This project is addressing one of the most urgent questions in oncology, determining whether a patient’s vital organs can tolerate life saving therapies. By combining our scalable organoid technology with iXCells’ expertise in cellular reprogramming and Kantify’s AI drug discovery platform, we are creating a patient specific testing system for novel chemotherapy drugs that reflects exactly the type of new approach methodologies the FDA is encouraging.”