CO-CULTURE SIMPLIFIED
Multi-Organ Culture, Simplified.
Scalable Co-Culture for High-Throughput Screening
Onexio’s innovative microplate technology allows co-culture via micro-scale diffusion channels between pairs of wells. This patented design facilitates improved assay relevance in HTS. Established uses include integrating drug metabolism and other intercellular interactions in a technically simple format for drug/chemical safety and discovery applications. The MicroDUO design is easily scaled (i.e., 96, 384, 1536-well plate formats and 48, 192 and 768 co-culture assays per plate respectively) in a ANSI/SLAS format that seamlessly integrates into existing automated HTS workflows. Co-culture can easily be initiated and reversed by the addition or removal of media, respectively. The wells in the MicroDUO plate can have clear or solid bottoms, allowing a range of assay endpoints on both cell types, (e.g., fluorescence, luminescence, or absorbance) to be measured by a standard plate reader or high-content imager. The MicroDUO offers a user-friendly assay set-up and while other technologies require extensive handling, equipment and unique expertise, the MicroDUO only requires the same level of operational knowledge needed for a standard microplate. The MicroDUO plate has been designed to be a cost-effective alternative to traditional co-culture platforms.
Onexio’s innovative microplate technology allows co-culture via micro-scale diffusion channels between pairs of wells. This patented design facilitates improved assay relevance in HTS. Established uses include integrating drug metabolism and other intercellular interactions in a technically simple format for drug/chemical safety and discovery applications. The microDUO design is easily scaled (i.e., 96, 384, 1536-well plate formats and 48, 192 and 768 co-culture assays per plate respectively) in a ANSI/SLAS format that seamlessly integrates into existing automated HTS workflows. Co-culture can easily be initiated and reversed by the addition or removal of media, respectively. The wells in the microDUO plate can have clear or solid bottoms, allowing a range of assay endpoints on both cell types, (e.g., fluorescence, luminescence, or absorbance) to be measured by a standard plate reader or high-content imager. The microDUO offers a user-friendly assay set-up and while other technologies require extensive handling, equipement and unique expertise, the microDUO only requires the same level of operational knowledge needed for a standard microplate. The microDUO plate has been designed to be a cost-effective alternative to traditional co-culture platforms.
The MicroDUO Platform
Onexio Biosystems is developing a scalable, HTS-compatible microplate platform that supports co-culture and multi-organ culture to improve human relevance in drug discovery and chemical toxicity testing applications. MicroDUO uses patented micro-scale diffusion channels to enable intercellular signaling between paired wells, creating more physiologically relevant models in a standard microplate format. Designed to scale across 96-, 384-, and 1536-well formats, MicroDUO integrates seamlessly into existing HTS workflows and instrumentation.
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Tony Jimenez is an entrepreneur and biomedical engineer with expertise in developing scalable, human-relevant in vitro systems. He holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and has more than 13 years of experience designing microphysiological systems (MPS), organ-on-chip technologies, advanced cell culture platforms, and automated assay workflows for disease modeling, drug discovery, and high-throughput screening (HTS).
Dr. Jimenez is the lead inventor of the MicroDUO technology and has led its design, fabrication, validation, and application development at Onexio. His current work focuses on developing scalable in vitro technologies that advance New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) by increasing physiological relevance and accelerating the adoption of animal-free preclinical models, including next-generation multi-organoid culture platforms.
Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer
Brian Johnson’s expertise focuses on bridging the gap between traditional animal models and modern high-throughput screening approaches through the development of human-relevant in vitro systems. Since earning his PhD in Molecular and Environmental Toxicology using mouse models, Brian has accumulated more than 11 years of experience engineering multi-culture and microphysiological systems (MPS) that better recapitulate human physiology in vitro.
At Onexio, Brian led assay design and application development for the MicroDUO platform, including assay workflows that contributed to its advancement through Stage 1 and Stage 2 of the Transform Tox Testing Challenge. In his research laboratory at Michigan State University, his team develops human-derived microphysiological, organotypic, and multi-culture models that reconstruct paracrine and endocrine signaling to support mechanistic studies, drug discovery, chemical screening, and toxicity testing.