Developing a platform and optimized cell system for enteroendocrine cell-based assays and compound screening

The human intestine is a remarkable organ which storesof the body s important neurotransmitterserotoninin enteroendocrine cellsEECsSerotonin and other EECs secreted hormones play critical roles in regulating human feeding behavior and satietyand their dysregulation leads to overeating and a host of other diseasesFor these reasonsthere is a need in the therapeutics marketplace for in vitro intestinal EECs platform that precisely recapitulates the physiology of in vivo intestinesTo meet this needAltis Biosystems Incan early stage biotechnology companywill collaborate with scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to develop a novelprimary stem cells basedin vitro intestinal modeltermed RepliGutthat contains sufficient EECs for studying serotonin secretionThe platform will be designed with the eventual goal during Phase II of creating systems for assaying a variety of intestinal hormones in a high content screeningThe goal is to validate the RepliGut product and bring this technology to therapeutics marketThe collaboration represents an ideal opportunity for the translation of an academic technology to the marketplace through the NIH sponsored SBIR programIn this Phase I SBIRthis collaboration will optimize the RepliGutwell platform for EECs cell lineage allocationinvestigate cell variationquantify serotonin secretionand validate the platform with a small scale compound screen for serotonin The novel enteroendocrine cell rich RepliGut platform will have broad applications in screening and validating therapeutics to manipulate feeding behavior and satiety which will revolutionize the treatment of many diseases in humans