What does it take to create scientific and medical breakthroughs? Can our ‘brain on a chip’ tool become a game-changer? Dr. Birgitt Schuele, associate professor at Stanford University, and Wim Roelandts, supporter of the first hour, share their insights, inspired by personal experiences.

Wim Roelandts, an engineer by training, has had a strong interest in innovation throughout his career. In 2009, he received an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven for his innovation-driven leadership in the US semiconductor industry.

A Belgian gem

Wim: “I’ve known for a long time that if you want to occupy a strong position in a market, you have to be innovative. Imec is an excellent example of that: they are a kind of gem. It’s not very well known, but they are one of the top research institutes in the world of semiconductor technology. That is remarkable for a small country like Belgium.”

Scientific match-making

By a twist of fate, Wim unwittingly laid the foundation for Mission Lucidity’s brain-on-a-chip project. “I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease myself in 2015. Shortly after, I joined the former Parkinson’s Institute and Clinical Center in the Bay Area, an organization that offered assistance to Parkinson’s patients and strived to make their situation a little easier. The two worlds that I was living in – Parkinson’s on one side, technology on the other – gave me the idea of connecting them. One day people from imec were visiting and I organized a meeting with the Parkinson’s Institute – that’s how the ball started rolling. Parkinson’s expert Dr. Schuele, who worked for the institute, showed interest in imec’s chip technology and how it could be applied to Parkinson’s research.”

Dr. Birgitt Schuele, professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine: “I really see it as a scientific match-making. Wim and Martine Peetermans of Amici Lovanienses were trying to find the best matches for my expertise in stem cell modeling and what else we would need to recreate a Parkinson’s brain on a chip. Martine put us in touch with Professor Patrik Verstreken in Leuven, and from our first meeting, new ideas just kept sparking.”

A game-changer

“It’s important that the team is excited: that’s a good measure of success,” Wim says. “You need people who want to see a change in the world. In general, innovation doesn’t come from individual scientists sitting behind their desks, but from interdisciplinary interactions. That’s where innovative creativity arises. In my career, I’ve always been looking out for those types of technologies that take knowledge from one field and apply it to another. And that’s exactly what’s happening here. This chip is a tool that scientists can use to probe into the unknown. It has the potential to become a standard research instrument that could even open up new avenues that we don’t even know exist today.”

Dr. Schuele: “It already is one of the game-changers for my research. The chip will allow us to study how human brain cells communicate and interact with each other in unprecedented detail. Another innovative aspect is that we’re not just looking at one cell type: we are growing different neurons subtypes that are susceptible in Parkinson’s disease, together in the chip to mimic complete brain circuits.”

Put some skin in the game

Together with his wife Maria, Wim generously supported an early phase of the project. But Wim’s involvement also came at a very different level. “At some point, Dr. Schuele said to me: you should put some skin in the game. And she meant that quite literally. Last year I donated some skin cells from my arm, which were transformed into brain cells in her lab. Scientists really can work magic.”

Dr. Schuele: “Wim’s donated cells will be the first patient cell lines that we’ll grow on the chip. We currently have a working prototype and are optimizing the system using control cell lines. At Stanford, Dr. J. William Langston and I have long been thinking of including the concept of genetic risk. Not only a person’s environment, but also their genetic makeup determines their risk of developing Parkinson’s. We are recruiting patients into the genetics program and asking them to donate skin cells, which we can later differentiate and study on the chip. Going further down the road, we’re also in contact with biotech companies that are developing targeted treatments for Parkinson’s. What better kind of in vitro clinical trial system can we use than this chip? Being able to see if inserting a healthy gene into the cells or applying a new drug can rescue the functional circuit on the chip – I cannot imagine a better clinical trial at this exploratory stage.”

Visionaries

Since 2019, the team has received over $1 million in seed funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and is part of their vibrant Neurodegeneration Challenge Network. More than 100 labs worldwide are part of this network and it’s still growing. In 2022, the team will host two workshops, in Leuven and Stanford, to show their network partners how the brain on a chip works and to start making the tool accessible to other labs.

Yet much more funding is needed to complete the project. Traditional grant agencies typically take little risk: you have to be able to demonstrate that it works, and that’s difficult if you have yet to develop the tool. Without visionary philanthropists like Wim, this kind of innovative research would hardly be possible.

Wim: “Sometimes I feel a bit like James Cook or Vasco da Gama: they discovered new parts of the world that nobody knew existed. With the right technologies, we can still open up new worlds. I am very happy to see that the brain-on-a-chip project is making progress, reaching its milestones, and that there’s already fruit on the tree.”