• Grant funding delivered in partnership with the NC3Rs, in support of UK Government roadmap to reduce animal testing by 2030
• Project to develop standardized workflow to more accurately predict drug behaviors, reduce animal testing and streamline development of safer, more effective medicines

Cambridge, UK, 12 August 2026: CN Bio, a leading provider of Organ-on-a-chip (OOC) Systems and solutions that accelerate drug discovery and development workflows, today announced it has been awarded £180k grant funding from Innovate UK. Delivered in partnership with the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs), the funding aims to support new approach methodologies (NAMs) for use in drug development, aligning with the UK Government’s roadmap to reduce dog and non-human primate (NHP) use in pharmacokinetic (PK) studies 35% by 2030¹.

The grant will enable CN Bio to develop a workflow integrating data generated using its advanced human multi-organ microphysiological systems (MPS) with physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models – providing a more practical, human-relevant alternative to animal-based PK studies.

Despite significant advances in NAMs, including laboratory and in silico methods, predicting drug behavior in humans remains a key challenge. As a result, the pharmaceutical industry continues to rely on animal studies to generate PK data on compound absorption, clearance, and systemic exposure. These studies, often conducted in dogs and non-human primates, are costly, low throughput, and offer poor translatability to human outcomes. There is a critical need for accurate, human-relevant alternatives, as recognized in the Government’s November 2025 roadmap.

CN Bio’s portfolio of bioengineered MPS recreate key aspects of human tissue biology, delivering decision-ready insights across drug safety, efficacy and PK analyses. The Company’s standardized discovery and development workflows de-risk pipelines with earlier, more confident decision-making, helping to reduce reliance on animal testing in pharmaceutical research.

The Innovate UK-funded project will explore the development and validation of a standardized workflow for human-relevant PK studies, building on CN Bio’s established dual-organ PhysioMimix^® Gut/Liver MPS. Mechanistic data generated within the MPS will be used to derive a range of PK parameters. These parameters will then be integrated with powerful in silico PBPK modelling, enabling researchers to generate mechanistic PK insights and translate them into clinically interpretable predictions within a single workflow.

To further improve these predictive capabilities, the project will include a feasibility study to incorporate a kidney model into CN Bio’s MPS platform, enabling estimation of renal clearance and other excretion-related processes. In parallel, the practicality and impact of introducing liquid handling automation will be explored to improve throughput, reproducibility, and suitability for routine use. As part of implementing this workflow, the Company will partner with contract research organizations to define the technical and operational requirements for its adoption.

Dr Yassen Abbas, Biology Group Leader, CN Bio, said: “We’re proud to have been selected for this project by Innovate UK, an exciting opportunity to advance the UK Government target to reduce dedicated PK studies using dogs or non-human primates by 35%. Understanding pharmacokinetics is crucial to determining a drug candidate’s efficacy and potential side effects, and this project represents a valuable new route to unlock earlier, human-relevant insights into drug disposition – ultimately supporting faster, more effective drug development.”

1. Press Release (11^th November, 2025): Animal testing to be phased out faster as UK unveils roadmap for alternative methods

ENDS

About CN Bio cn-bio.com

CN Bio is a leading Organ-on-chip (OOC) company on a mission to accelerate drug discovery by transforming how human-specific efficacy, ADME, and safety data are generated. 

The Company brings over a decade of cell biology and bioengineering expertise developing microphysiological systems (MPS) that accurately mimic complex human physiology in the laboratory. These valuable insights to how drugs will perform in patients significantly reduces risks in the clinic and relieves the dependence on animal models.

CN Bio’s portfolio of products and services provide end-to-end support across the drug discovery and development process, saving time and reducing R&D costs for their customers. The predictive organ models deepen understanding of disease mechanisms; to help uncover new drug targets, and enable effective therapeutics to be developed more efficiently.  

The Company’s groundbreaking PhysioMimix^® Core System is the only MPS with validated performance across single-organ, multi-organ, and higher throughput configurations within a single benchtop instrument, enabling users to start simple and seamlessly scale for future-proofed research.

The power of PhysioMimix^® technology has been recognized by the U.S. FDA, and harnessed by 16 of the leading pharmaceutical companies, globally. In 2023, CN Bio helped to deliver a regulatory world first, supporting Inipharm’s successful INI-822 filing to initiate clinical testing for the treatment of metabolic liver disease.

To find out more about how CN Bio is pioneering faster, more accurate drug discovery, please visit: cn-bio.com and follow us on LinkedIn @CN Bio

About Innovate UK (www.ukri.org/councils/innovate-uk)

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), is the UK’s innovation agency. It backs the nation's most promising deep tech businesses in the UK’s priority sectors: providing the funding, expert support and connections that help them start, scale and stay in the UK.