Xilis: developing miniature cancer organoids

Duke spinout Xilis emerged from stealth Thursday with a $70 million series A round led by Mubadala Capital to advance a miniature organoid platform designed to guide treatment decisions and accelerate drug development in cancer. 

The company’s MicroOrganoSphere technology generates organoid “droplets” that replicate the tissue structure, gene expression and immune microenvironment of patients’ tumor samples. “This could enable us to become a gold standard for human model-based drug discovery, replacing animals which oftentimes don’t fully capture human disease,” Xilis Inc. CEO Xiling Shen told BioCentury. ...