The centre will develop the first five barrier tissue models to be approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration) (FDA) for preclinical testing instead of animal experiments.
Barrier tissue models are used in drug development to simulate the physiological barriers present in the human body, such as the skin, lungs, gastrointestinal tract, and blood-brain barrier. These first models will pave the way for drug development targeting conditions such as central nervous system disorders, fibrosis, and autoimmune diseases affecting the musculoskeletal system. By doing so, we will be one step closer to ending animal trials in the early stages of drug development.
Dr Webb's work with the Optics and Photonics Group, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, is integral to this effort. His decade-long partnership with the University of Rochester has focused on non-invasive electrophysiological and imaging technologies, to better understand how pharmaceuticals behave in living tissue barrier models.
Dr Webb's optical designs for high-content, non-invasive imaging are being deployed to capture data for the US project, in collaboration with companies such as Etaluma (San Diego), and Cairn Research (Faversham, Kent).
Blood-retinal and blood-lung barrier models being developed at Nottingham by Mr Alex Foss (Consultant Ophthalmologist and Honorary Professor at the Queen's Medical Centre), Dr Felicity De Cogan (School of Pharmacy) and Dr Rachel Clifford (Anne McLaren Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Respiratory Medicine, School of Medicine) are also being incorporated within the technology platform co-developed with Rochester.
As well as reducing animal testing, barrier tissue models and technologies developed at Nottingham are pioneering new ways to administer drugs without needles, which could revolutionise drug delivery methods for conditions affecting the lungs, skin and eyes.
By combining photonics technologies with tissue engineering, Nottingham tissue-on-chip researchers are creating miniature models of living barrier tissues, such eye, lung and skin, on transparent microchips. This allows researchers to not only to simulate but also visualise to the structure and function of these tissues.