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About oqCORE

The Ontario-Québec Center for Organ-on-a-Chip Engineering (oqCORE) is a research and development centre that aims to overcome the engineering barriers preventing broad adoption and scalable manufacturing of organ-on-a-chip platforms, as well as the difficulties associated with the advances required for commercialization. oqCORE is housed at four leading Canadian universities (the University of Toronto, McGill University, McMaster University, and Ryerson University), as well as the University Health Network, and the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research. The benefits of our work will be realized through technology transfer activities of our team, which is experienced in the creation of new companies (TARA Biosystems, Kapplex, FlowJEM, and Rheo Biotechnologies), IP licensing, and collaboration with industrial partners.

Mission Statement

Our mission is to transform the drug development process by providing tissue models capable of faithfully recapitulating the hallmarks of human physiology and disease in vitro. Our centre helps to overcome the engineering barriers preventing broad adoption and scalable manufacturing of organ-on-a-chip platforms in Canada and will provide the advances required for commercialization. Our team members have experience developing miniature 3D models, (aka organs-on- a-chip), of the heart, liver, tumor, kidney and placenta.

Vision Statement

The overarching vision of our Center is to validate and productize on-chip devices addressing organs for drug safety and efficacy testing. Although there are important differences between the targeted organs, the challenges that currently limit their production and validation are remarkably similar. In our center, we will develop a systems approach for manufacturing of organ-on-a-chip devices, as well as new materials and processes needed to bring these new devices to the market. We will develop design criteria and a validation pathway for bringing organ-on-a-chip devices to use as drug discovery tools.