Developed within the NXTGEN Organ-on-Chip program, Cuore delivers functional human muscle data earlier in the drug development pipeline — reducing failure rates, accelerating research, and bringing effective treatments to patients faster.

Why Current Preclinical Models Fall Short

Millions of patients worldwide are still waiting for medical breakthroughs that could change the course of their disease. Yet despite enormous research investment, a large proportion of drug candidates fail during development — often because traditional animal models cannot accurately predict how humans will respond.

Researchers have long sought more reliable alternatives. That search is now yielding results.

What Is the NXTGEN Organ-on-Chip Program?

The NXTGEN Organ-on-Chip initiative is a national Dutch program bringing together leading academic, biomedical, and technological partners to advance the next generation of preclinical testing through Microphysiological Systems (MPS) — laboratory models built from human cells that replicate organ function outside the body.

While MPS holds enormous promise, current systems have faced significant barriers: they are often too complex to scale, difficult to standardize, and hard to integrate into existing research workflows.

Introducing Cuore: Functional Muscle Data, Earlier in the Pipeline

To overcome these barriers, the NXTGEN consortium has developed Cuore — a scalable, standardizable muscle-on-chip platform that generates functional human muscle data at the stage of drug development where it matters most.

Cuore empowers researchers and pharmaceutical companies to:

• Make faster, better-informed go/no-go decisions on drug candidates

• Access human-relevant muscle readouts without relying on animal models

• Accelerate the path from preclinical research to patient treatment

A Breakthrough for Muscle Research and Humane Science

Cuore represents a major step toward safer, more efficient drug development. As part of the NXTGEN Organ-on-Chip program, it is shaping the next generation of muscle research — and setting a new standard for human-relevant, animal-free preclinical science.