An innovative wide range flow sensor to unlock microfluidic cell analyses: GALILEO
A high-precision, wide-range flow sensor to advance microfluidic cell analyses for preclinical studies.
Published on 17/05/2023 by Marlene Kopf.
Check our Galileo website for updates on the project’s development.
Wide-range flow sensor to unlock microfluidic cell analyses: introduction
We have some big news: The Microfluidics Innovation Center has won an EIC Transition grant!
This prestigious grant enables us to develop an innovative wide-range flow sensor from proof-of-concept to a complete prototype for beta testing with a budget of 1.67 million Euros.
The GALILEO project steps in at an exciting point: Microfluidics is currently one of the strategies with the most significant potential to take cell testing and analysis for drug development to a new level.
The success rate for drug candidates is still meager (around only 3.4% for cancer drugs), and conventional drug development still requires a lot of animal testing.
Integrated microscale fluidics offer new possibilities for in vitro cell cultures and open the door to cutting-edge research on single-cell analysis and nanotherapies.
The further development of flow sensors will make an essential contribution to this field of research.
As new as these approaches are, we see a lot of potential for technological developments in this area: End users report that the flow rate range they can measure and control with conventional sensors needs to be extended by a factor of 100.
In addition, the requirements for measurement accuracy and sensor drift detection are high to minimize experimental errors.
The GALILEO project tackles these urgent requirements for diagnosis, drug discovery, and development by developing a novel wide-range flow sensor. By joining our team, you will improve the success rate of new therapeutics and help provide earlier detection and treatment.
Integrated microfluidics, enabling single cell analyses and nanotechnology: project description
The highly competitive EIC Transition grant is intended for innovation activities beyond experimental proof of concept.
It supports the maturation and validation of novel technologies in the laboratory and relevant application environments and the development of a business case and business model for future innovation commercialization like the GALILEO wide range flow sensor.
The MIC has won one of the highly coveted EIC Transition grants for the GALILEO project out of 181 proposals submitted in September 2022. Thanks to this funding from the European Innovation Council, we will bring our novel wide-range flow sensor to the beta testing stage by 2025.
Related content & results from this project
As a first result of the Galileo project, we developed the Galileo flow sensor and compared its performance to other flow sensors.
Then, we integrated the Galileo flow sensor into our automated recirculation system.
We have published three reviews:
Funding
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon research and innovation program under HORIZON-EIC-2022-TRANSITION-01, grant agreement no. 101113098 (GALILEO).
Start date: 1 May 2023
End date: 30 April 2025
Overall budget: €1,667,500.00
