Evaluating inhalation toxicity potential is key to establish the safety of new inhaled drugs, chemical products like pesticides or agrochemicals, or consumer goods.
Alveolar macrophages are the first line of defence against invading pathogens, and their response can indicate that a particular chemical is harmful to human lung tissue.
However, there are different degrees of alveolar macrophage response, and high content image analysis assays such as morph_ONE can help companies and researchers to identify which responses are unacceptable, and which are not, allowing relevant decisions to be made about product development.
Distinguishing different levels of alveolar macrophage responses
ImmuONE’s new service morph_ONE is a reproducible, mechanistic-driven cell painting assay that can differentiate alveolar macrophage responses in vitro and match them to compounds with varying safety profiles. morph_ONE reveals how inhaled substances affect more than a dozen morphological features of macrophages, including sphericity, cell and nuclear area, shape analysis and vacuolation profiles. Currently, there is no established in vitro assessment that can provide morphometric characteristics of alveolar macrophages, so morph_ONE fills a crucial gap in the market.
Through individual cell analysis and layering of cellular features, ImmuONE can generate phenotypic profiles to demonstrate how alveolar macrophage respond to compounds of interest. Our scientists can then determine whether these new compounds are safe by comparing their phenotypic profiles to those in our reference database. The assay correlates with in vivo findings, reducing reliance on animal studies, which can be expensive and time-consuming.
Figuring out foamy macrophage responses
A major hurdle in the development of new inhaled products is the observation of foamy macrophage responses in animal studies. Foamy macrophage responses raise safety concerns and hinder progress, even though little is known about whether these responses are truly harmful to the lungs.
Our research shows that morph_ONE can identify foamy macrophage phenotypes linked to phospholipidosis and apoptosis, making it a promising in vitro screening tool for the safety assessment of inhaled products.
Our researchers harbour specific unique expertise in this niche area, offering guidance and support to help decision-makers make more informed choices along the product development pipeline.
- The profiles of both rat and human macrophage cell lines differentiated between cell responses to marketed inhaled drugs and compounds known to induce phospholipidosis and apoptosis.
- These results indicate that our multi-parameter HCIA assay is suitable to generate characteristic drug-induced macrophage response profiles, thus enabling differentiation of foamy macrophage phenotypes associated with phospholipidosis and apoptosis.
- This approach shows great potential as pre-clinical in vitro screening tool for safety assessment of candidate inhaled medicines.
Prof. Victoria Hutter
Chief Scientific Officer
Victoria spent 8 years at the University of Hertfordshire from lecturer to associate professor and established her own independent research team; securing over £6M funding in topical drug delivery and toxicology. This supported the development of new innovations and IP in novel human cell culture models and techniques as alternatives to animal testing.
Dr Victoria Hunter co-founded ImmuONE in 2019 with Abigail after a successful Innovation to Commercialisation of University Research (ICURe) programme which allowed us to accelerate our human in vitro immunocompetent lung models to market. Her role as Chief Scientific Officer spans the scientific and commercial aspects of the company.
Dr Louis Scott
Client Relations Manager
Louis is a true believer in the need for robust, animal-free, and human-relevant models in toxicity testing and is an immunologist by trade.
“Exploring the modulation of macrophage biology in commercial testing is pivotal for understanding important aspects of how lungs and bodies are affected by inhaled compounds.
Immune cells are our knights in shining armour when it comes to protecting our body, and by that logic, ensuring their health is incredibly important.”
You can arrange a call with Louis and explore how morph_ONE can speed up and improve the accuracy of your macrophage testing:
