TARA Biosystems announces issuance of US patent for Biowire™ II heart-on-a-chip platform

A company offering physiologically relevant human “heart-on-a-chip” tissue models for cardiac risk assessment and drug discovery applications, announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued US Patent 10,254,274 covering methods, compositions and devices for making and using three-dimensional biological tissues that mimic native physiology. 

The technology described in this newly issued patent is embodied by TARA’s Biowire™ II “heart-on-a-chip” platform, invented by TARA co-founder, Milica Radisic, Ph.D. and her team at the University of Toronto.  TARA has exclusive worldwide rights to the patented technology and utilizes the Biowire™ II platform in providing cardiac risk assessment and drug discovery related services to the pharmaceutical industry. The patent is part of TARA’s expanding portfolio of intellectual property in the field of stem cell tissue engineering.

TARA’s Biowire™ II platform features technology for both engineering and analyzing three-dimensional tissue models. In a common application of the technology, stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes are first cultured and organized by the features of the platform into three-dimensional tissues. The tissues are subjected to an extended protocol of electrical field stimulation in culture, to promote advanced physiological maturation. In addition, the Biowire™ II platform’s design uniquely incorporates elastic sensing elements across which the engineered tissues are suspended, allowing for the non-destructive measurement of the force exerted by the tissues as they contract as well as other parameters pertinent to the assessment of cardiac safety and efficacy of pharmaceutical compounds.

Dr. Radisic commented, “The creation of complex cardiac models that accurately mimic the human heart has been a major challenge in our field. Biowire™ II is the culmination of more than a decade of research, design and engineering to capture those platform elements and features capable of producing high fidelity human cardiac tissue in vitro.”

“The issuance of this patent by the USPTO is validation that our platform is unique,” said Misti Ushio, Ph.D., CEO of TARA Biosystems. “We are very proud of achieving this important milestone.”