The Original Human-on-a-Chip Company

Accelerating drug discovery with a breakthrough, human-based platform giving hope to every patient, especially those battling rare diseases

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Leading the way in Human-on-a-Chip Research

Hesperos is named for Venus in the evening sky. Like her, we are a leading light, providing world-class research in disease modeling and drug testing through our use of human-on-a-chip systems. Our patent positions and the over 20 years of expertise of both Drs. Shuler and Hickman make us the company to work with for your most difficult problems as well as for cost competitive, routine, human-on-a-chip assays.

Example 5-organ model funded by NIH's HEAL initiative to study the effects of an overdose
Example 5-organ model funded by NIH's HEAL initiative to study the effects of an overdose

Human-on-a-Chip®

  • Functional, multi-organ, in vitro platforms
  • Determine therapeutic index
  • Reducing the need for animal testing
  • Focus is on building custom models for therapeutic development

A Platform for every Human Disease

Physiologically realistic models providing unprecedented preclinical insight into disease states and the human response to therapeutics

Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion (ADME)

Understand the rate that a chemical is absorbed and distributed, the rate and pathways of drug metabolism and excretion, and the plasma concentration of a drug over time.

Disease Modeling

Reproduce the functional aspects of specific disease states gaining visibility into how specific organ tissues are damaged and recover in response to various treatments.

Safety & Efficacy, simultaneously

Determine efficacy and off-target toxicity for both parent compounds and there often more active metabolites all in the same system enabling determination of therapeutic index.

Drug-Drug Interactions

Understand the effects of both single drug treatments AND drug-drug combinations - all in the same system.

Simulating Organ Function

Unlike other tests that extrapolate organ function based on biomarker activity and protein analysis, our models are working systems that recreate muscle and tissue function as well as neural and inter-organ communication. The resulting functional reports closely correlate to what clinicians observe in human clinical trials.

Data Driven Analysis

Our systems generate thousands of data points which correlate to key functional aspects of each organ.  Our custom analyses are then able to parse the data quickly and fruitfully to identify subtle changes in function alongside large-scale shifts in morphology and behavior, yielding insights into each drug.

Select Organ Modules

Easily interchange an ever-growing list of available organs depending on your application.  Cells derived from patient samples & iPSC.

Primary Organs

  • Heart

    Both contractile force and electrical activity measured in real-time

  • Liver-1

    Liver

    Functional liver metabolizes drugs as expected in the human body

  • Brain

    Neurons

    Study neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS and Alzheimers

  • Skeletal

    Skeletal Muscle

    Study a wide range of diseases, such as Parkinson's, with a functional neuromuscular junction model

  • Kidneys

    Kidney Renal Proximal Tubule (RPT)

    Determine the reabsorption, secretion, and kidney safety profile of your compound

Barrier Tissues

  • Skin

    Skin

    Determine the transdermal diffusion of novel compounds applied topically and monitor the effects of the absorbed drugs on organ physiology

  • BBB

    Blood-Brain Barrier (CNS)

    Investigate the transport rates, mechanisms, and barrier effects as novel chemicals and biologics enter the central nervous system

  • Immune System

    Monocytes can be added to the recirculating medium in our multi-organ systems characterized for activation markers and differential cytokine release profiles

  • Gastointestinal

    GI Tract

    Reproduce absorption and first-pass metabolism with our GI-tract model

Select Research Institutes & Commercial Partners

We are funded and collaborate with the best.  A select list as follows:

Ready to get started?

Schedule a webinar with our team of experts to find out how we can accelerate development of your therapeutic.