Public Funding for Acellz Limited

Describe your project in detail, and in a way that you are happy to see published. Do not include any commercially sensitive information. If we award your project funding, we will publish this description. This could happen before you start your project. For new products such as cosmetics, sprays, chemicals, and medicines to reach the market, they must first be assessed for human safety. The current procedures for assessing the safety of substances in the eye frequently use animals (mainly rabbits) and are not relevant to humans. Whilst laboratory-grown human tissue models are also used, these are very simplistic and not representative of complex tissues of the human eye, hence the need for animal testing. Our technology enables a better understanding of the safety of new products in the eye. We have developed a new human-relevant 'eye-in-a-dish' technology to assess the safety of substances without the need for animal testing. Our product combines human eye barrier and immune cells, grown in the laboratory in a 3D arrangement to better mimic the responses of the eye to chemicals. This technology provides more detailed information about how a new chemical can react in the human eye in an easy-to-use format that is compatible with existing testing methods. This allows customers to measure and record the toxic responses associated with human eye exposure to screen the safety of new substances efficiently, using fewer tests and without the need for animals saving companies money and time. This 12-month project will fund the set-up and development of a new UK-based company, ACellZ to commercialise this technology. The funding will support the team behind the invention to drive the commercialisation of our novel technology and to demonstrate its impact in the life sciences industry. During the project, we will carry out comparison studies against the standard commercial models to demonstrate the advantage of our system over existing technologies. Whilst we have already identified possible routes to market over the past 6 months, this project will support further development of our business model and confirm the best route to market to support the commercial development for scale-up and supply.