about_header

ALTIS BIOSYSTEMS

Our Origin Story

Altis’ mission is to provide scientific innovation, through collaborative relationships, by helping companies develop safer and more effective therapies to treat patients suffering from human disease. We support life science researchers by providing expertise and unique in vitro platforms to further their research and increase their understanding of human biology, while reducing the need for animal testing.

Current approaches to drug development have resulted in an 88% failure rate in clinical trials and $151 billion spent every year on research and development. A key factor driving this failure rate is the use of Caco-2 cells (cancer cells) and animal testing, which are an essential part of preclinical trials and yet cannot accurately predict human results.

That’s why Altis developed a next-generation intestinal platform that produces a layer of human intestinal stem and differentiated cells – either of the large or small intestine – that can be used for compound screening, disease modeling, and microbiome research. It can also be used to study many aspects of drug disposition including toxicity, metabolism, drug absorption, and efficacy.

Altis Biosystems is a spin-out company from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and based in Durham, North Carolina. The intellectual property behind its stem cell platform was created as part of an NIH Transformative Research Award to develop a microfluidic organ-on-a-chip mimic of the human colon and awarded to Altis’ scientific founders. We are proud to have industry leading scientists on our team, capable of disrupting preclinical studies, and accelerating drug development to produce more effective drugs.