Emulate, Inc. (Emulate) is a biotechnology company that commercialized Organs-on-Chips technology—a human cell-based technology that recreates organ-level function to model organs in healthy and diseased states. The technology has applications in pharmaceutical research, product development, testing how different medicines, chemicals, and foods affect human health. Emulate has also worked with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on a precision medicine initiative that uses Organs-on-Chips technology in the clinical setting. This initiative is designed to provide clinicians with better data about how an individual patient may respond to treatment. The company also signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the

U.S. Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a federal agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the control and supervision of food s ...

to advance and qualify its Human Emulation System to meet regulatory evaluation for product testing.

Technology

Emulate's Organs-on-Chips technology has been used to recreate the function of a variety of different organs, including the liver, intestine, brain, kidney, and lung. The company's Organ-Chips are about the size of a AA battery and feature two fluidic channels that create the flow of blood and other fluids. The chips are made of a flexible polymer and can be stretched to recreate similar motions to those of breathing or

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. The company has developed a Human Emulation System that combines its Organ-Chips along with hardware and software apps. The system is designed to reduce some of the complexities of working with Organs-on-Chips technology and is built around the Organ-Chip, which recreates the microenvironment of an organ that is found within the body. An instrument called Zoë Culture Module provides pressure driven flow and recreates perfusion pressure and shear forces like those experienced in the human body.

History

Emulate was spun out from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, where the technology was initially invented and then extensively developed. Scientific Founder

Donald Ingber Donald E. Ingber (born 1956) is an American cell biologist and bioengineer. He is the founding director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University,Crow, James Mitchell (19 January 2015)"The man who built or ...

founded the company around 2013. James Coon was co-founder and the first CEO. Jim Corbett is the current CEO. In July 2014, the founders raised $12 million in a first round of financing. In March 2016, the company raised a Series B round of investment of $28 million from repeat and new investors, including NanoDimension, ALS Finding a Cure, Atel Ventures and Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings. In February 2018, Emulate formed strategic partnerships with

Roche F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, commonly known as Roche, is a Swiss multinational healthcare company that operates worldwide under two divisions: Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostics. Its holding company, Roche Holding AG, has shares listed on the SIX S ...

, a Swiss-based pharmaceutical company, and

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, a pharmaceutical company based in Japan. The company raised its most recent round of funding in June 2018 when they announced that they had raised a Series C round of funding led by Silicon Valley-based capital firm

Founders Fund Founders Fund is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. Formed in 2005, Founders Fund had more than $11 billion in aggregate capital under management as of 2022. The firm invests across all stages and sectors, including aerospace, artificia ...

. In September 2021, the company raised a Series E round of $82 million.

Technology

History

See also

References

Further reading