BioHealth Innovation (BHI) and MIMETAS, a developer of organ-on-a-chip technology for testing of new medicines in high-throughput on miniaturized organ and disease models, have announced Todd Chappell, MBA, an entrepreneur-in-residence for BHI, has been named general manager, U.S. Affairs for MIMETAS. A Netherlands-based company, MIMETAS is establishing its offices within BHI's headquarters in Rockville, Md. MIMETAS and BHI created a U.S. subsidiary of MIMETAS to access the clinical, regulatory and scientific resources available in Central Maryland and to access the U.S. marketplace, the largest life sciences market in the world.

Previously, Chappell was the vice president of operations for Shape Pharmaceuticals, a portfolio company of HealthCare Ventures, where he oversaw all day-to-day operations involved in the development of a novel HDAC inhibitor for Cutaneous-T-Cell-Lymphoma. He was at CombinatoRx for eight years and was director of new products. Chappell will be combining his role at MIMETAS with his existing EIR position at BHI.

"A U.S. market presence is of crucial importance to further expand the MIMETAS business model," said Chappell. "The U.S. leads the way in driving enhanced models for development of new drugs and the MIMETAS Organ-on-a-Chip platform is an important option for early-stage drug development and later-stage therapy selection."

MIMETAS' OrganoPlates contain 96 3D cell cultures that are each individually perfused with medium. The platform allows for arbitrary co-culture complexity without usage of artificial membranes and mimics gradients of signaling molecules similar to the human body. Moreover the microtiter plate platform is fully compatible to industrial screening and readout equipment.

"We identified MIMETAS as a high potential, fast-growing company," said Rich Bendis, president and CEO of BHI. "The presence of MIMETAS in the state of Maryland is therefore mutually beneficial: it provides MIMETAS with access to  U.S. institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, University of Maryland, NIH and FDA while the presence of MIMETAS here will help generate high-tech jobs in the state of Maryland."