Re:Build Fikst was approached by a small team of tissue engineers, biologists, and senior leadership from Javelin to help develop the hardware platform that accompanies their novel biological approach. The Fikst team designed and built physical prototypes, enabling the tissue engineers to run experiments and refine their process. Our partnership with Javelin extended beyond the initial prototype phase. We designed the production instrument and its consumable, and now serve as Javelin’s production supplier for both. This full-scope collaboration helped bring Javelin’s innovative biology from the lab to a finished product.
The industry standard for preclinical drug discovery relies on animal or simplified in vitro models. Unfortunately, these methods often lack the sophistication to provide clinically relevant, longitudinal data. To address this challenge, Javelin developed a new hardware platform to enable their novel biology approach. This platform centers on creating a human tissue culture model, or a “organ-on-a-chip,” that more closely mimics human physiology than traditional models. The Javelin platform needed to be a small-volume, recirculating system that could be easily operated by a variety of scientists, from tissue engineers to biologists. This design allows for the long-term study of human tissue and its response to pharmaceuticals, providing data that is both more accurate and more predictive of clinical outcomes.
We worked with the Javelin team to determine the technical and user needs for a variety of tissue chamber designs, including those for liver, muscle, and kidney. Using COMSOL, we evaluated and refined each concept before creating physical test chambers. Our team used Design for Manufacturing (DFM) and Design for Assembly (DFA) techniques to ensure each design could be quickly and affordably produced. This allowed us to support the full process, from initial technology development to low-volume manufacturing. The result is a fully productized liver chamber featuring an injection-molded, laser-welded chip and a machined instrument with industrial design. We continue to collaborate with Javelin, with our sights set on commercial scaling.
We operated at a rapid pace by implementing a two-week design-build-biological test cycle, which kept up with Javelin’s fast-paced testing schedule. Our in-house manufacturing capabilities allowed for quick and frequent design changes informed directly by Javelin’s test results. This streamlined process accelerated the development cycle and ultimately led to a final product now being sold to customers. Our approach and expertise transformed their initial proof-of-concept to a final product. They have launched their commercial product line and are now empowering other companies to speed up their preclinical drug discovery with this technology.
Systematic and thoughtful pathway through the geometry creation, bonding, and sterilization processes allowed development of a complex chip to be supported by experimental data.
Without a 2-week design-build-biological test cycle, this technology would not exist today.”
— Emily Geishecker, Javelin Biotech Co-Founder
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