We attended the 3rd Microphysiological system (MPS) World Summit (MPS World Summit, June 10-14). The first one was held in New Orleans, the second in Berlin, and this time at the International Convention Center in Seattle. Although relatively a new conference, its scale has grown bigger as time goes on, with approximately 1,000 attendees from 37 countries, 134 oral presentations, 96 exhibiting companies, and 665 poster presentations this time.

In particular, we found much more interests in MPS coming from the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and food industries compared to previous years. Many Japanese companies participating in AMED-MPS project, including ourselves, also joined this year's conference, providing valuable opportunities to demonstrate to the world the capabilities of Japanese MPS devices, measurement instruments, and drug discovery support services.

This year, we exhibited our new MPS products, “Biostellar™ Plate” and “MyoFlex™ Plate” for the first time outside Japan. The “Biostellar™ Plate” is a stirrer-pump integrated open-platform MPS that enables co-culture of multiple organ cells.

With the growing need for drug screening and models to predict drug efficacy and toxicity, this device, which can easily connect different organs, was highly evaluated by many visitors.

The “MyoFlex™ Plate” is a device for constructing 3D tissue and measuring contractile force using human iPS cell-derived cardiomyocytes. As a model for predicting myocardial contractile dysfunction caused by certain drugs, this product also attracted a great deal of interest from visitors.

A number of people came to our booth to see the two MPS devices and expressed their opinions and expectations. It was a very fruitful conference where we were able to promote our new products to the world and exchange information with other participating companies and researchers from academia.

We will accelerate the development of applications with AMED partners and hope to introduce detailed examples of use at the 4th World Summit in Brussels, Belgium next year. We will continue to work together to contribute in the fields of drug discovery, cosmetics, and food research by providing a highly usable MPS platform.

This month, we would like to introduce a paper published in Scientific Reports: Hypoxia inducible factor 1α promotes trichogenic gene expression in human dermal papilla cells. This study reports a new discovery regarding the mechanism of androgenetic alopecia (AGA) and proposes a new approach for its treatment.

This study has revealed a possible relationship between the function of Dermal papilla cells (DPCs), which play an important role in hair growth, and the hypoxia-inducible factor HIF-1α: HIF1A was highly expressed in healthy scalp tissue and may affect the development of hair follicles.

In this study, 3D culture of DPCs was performed using PrimeSurface^® 96U plates to mimic the in vivo environment. 3D culture showed that the expression of trichogenic genes was reduced in DPC spheroids in which HIF-1α expression was suppressed, the importance of HIF-1α was discussed.

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Thank you for reading S-BIO Insight, I am Kanazawa from the S-Bio Business Division. With summer in full swing, fireworks festivals are being held all over Japan. This is a picture I took at the TOKYO City Pop Fireworks held at the Tokyo Racecourse in Fuchu City in July. The large fireworks beautifully bloomed in the night sky, making us forget the summer heat!
This month, we are sending you our report on attending the 3rd MPS World Summit and PrimeSurface^® paper introduction. Our MPS devices will surely provide a great support in the field of drug discovery research, so please do not miss its release!