Tuhin Bhowmick
Co-Founder and CEO, Pandorum Technologies
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a major chronic liver disease affecting over 24% of the world’s adult population.
While NAFLD/steatosis is benign and can be reversed with lifestyle and diet modifications, over 30% of the NAFLD population can progress to a more advanced stage known as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), characterised by inflammation, fibrosis and cirrhosis.
Pandorum is a tissue-engineering and regenerative medicine company specialised in developing stem cell-derived therapeutics.
Addressing unmet need
NASH in effect is a pandemic of unmet clinical needs. The complications related to NASH are associated with three major components- metabolic, fibrotic and inflammatory. Further, an additional reason for failure of drugs in advanced stages of clinical trials is the lack of suitable experimental models which can reliably translate to humans.
Pandorum is a tissue-engineering and regenerative medicine company specialised in developing stem cell-derived therapeutics known as exosomes, enriched with factors to treat liver diseases involving inflammation and fibrosis. These exosomes are not only capable of reversing the disease pathology, but can also promote healthy regeneration, restoring the liver to a healthier state.
Screening therapeutic agents
At Pandorum, we address the issue of drug failure by developing 3D human liver micro-tissue (organoids) of NASH and using them as an advanced screening platform for our exosome-based therapeutics. Our disease model successfully recapitulates the transition from NAFLD to NASH and serves as a human relevant model that can predict the efficacy of drugs with high reliability. We use multi-parameter molecular readouts to capture disease reversal state when treated with exosomes and relevant pharmacological agents in the market.
