The BMBF project "VISION", launched in June 2019, aims to reduce animal experiments by developing a special analysis platform. It consists of the combination of a microfluidic organ culture system (in vitro) and bioinformatic (in silico) analyses of disease mechanisms.

"VISION" develops and validates the in vitro/in silico analysis platform especially for toxicological inhalation studies, which could reduce animal testing in regulatory, application-oriented and basic research. At the same time, the microfluidic chip system creates new possibilities for mimicking various cell and tissue types in vitro in order to generate biological, pharmacological and toxicological data for in silico method development under physiologically relevant conditions.

Biomedical engineering as well as biological-medical and pharmaceutical science from Saarland are closely cooperating to develop the "VISION" analysis platform based on a combination of an in vitro lung-liver model, (b) bioinformatic analysis methodology and (c) the integration of clinical data, which enables detailed biological, pharmacological and toxicological analysis.