Emulate's AVA System Revolutionizes Drug Discovery with Scalable Organ-on-a-Chip Technology

By Olivia Frost | August 5, 2025
With nearly 90% of candidate drugs failing clinical trials, Emulate, Inc. has introduced the AVA Emulation System to address the urgent need for more human-relevant and scalable drug discovery methods. AVA is the first self-contained Organ-on-a-Chip workstation designed to support up to 96 Organ-Chip Emulations in a single run, significantly improving decision-making and reducing costs in preclinical research.
The system integrates high-throughput culture, environmental control, and real-time imaging, enabling faster, more reproducible studies. Emulate's 2022 study on the Liver-Chip demonstrated superior predictive power over animal models, correctly identifying hepatotoxic drugs and achieving 100% success in distinguishing structural analogs. This breakthrough led to the Liver-Chip being accepted into the FDA's ISTAND program, marking a milestone in regulatory acceptance of Organ-on-a-Chip technologies.
AVA also aligns with the FDA's recent roadmap, which encourages the use of new approach methodologies like Organ-Chips for expedited review of IND submissions. By generating large-scale, human-relevant data, AVA helps pharmaceutical companies reduce reliance on animal testing while lowering costs and accelerating research.
Academic researchers, facing pressure to adopt human-based models due to the NIH's halt on funding animal-only studies, will also benefit from AVA's scalability and reduced costs. The system supports core labs in running smaller experiments while maintaining reproducibility and efficiency.
Despite progress, challenges remain, including the need for standardized data formats and validation practices. Emulate is collaborating with organizations like NIST to address these issues, paving the way for broader adoption of Organ-on-a-Chip systems.
As regulatory shifts and technological innovation converge, AVA is poised to transform the drug development landscape, making human-relevant models the default tool for assessing efficacy and toxicity in early-stage research. This marks a significant step toward ethical, sustainable, and efficient drug discovery.

Published: 8/5/2025