- Interero Biosystems is a Denver-based startup spun out of the University of Michigan. It grows small clumps of human intestinal tissue in the lab, called organoids, and sells them to drug companies and others.
- Its flagship product, GastroScreen, is an intestinal organoid about 1 mm in diameter. Customers can use it in a healthy intestinal state or induce a disease state to observe drug responses. The company said it ships about 100 in a tube at a time.
- The company has fewer than 7 employees and fewer than 10 customers, and the source says it received a pre-seed investment of $2.3 million last year. The CEO said revenue exceeded $400,000 from the 4 quarter of last year through the 3 quarter of this year.
- The company claims GastroScreen may predict human drug responses more accurately than existing animal or cell models. However, this is still being supported by evidence, and it is currently at the 2 stage of a 3-stage validation process. In the final stage, it plans to compare results directly with drug companies' animal and clinical data.
O: A team member in a pharmaceutical company's non-clinical research group who is reviewing intestinal alternative models to complement animal testing may want to first ask an external organoid company for the scope of its validation data so they can compare options.
X: The prediction accuracy and drug response results are claims made by the company, its CEO, and its CTO, and the final comparative study is still in progress, so independent validation data should be checked separately.