NXTGEN Hightech spotlights Lab-on-Chip: Small Chips, Big Impact
Invest-NL has published a new in-depth story on Lab-on-Chip technology, featuring Ingrid Relou, domain lead at NXTGEN Hightech, alongside Carmen van Vilsteren (Health~Holland) and Yvonne Greeuw (Invest-NL). The article highlights the enormous potential of this technology and the pivotal role NXTGEN Hightech plays in making it happen.
What is Lab-on-Chip?
Lab-on-Chip technology integrates complex laboratory processes onto chips just a few centimetres in size. This enables faster, more affordable and more sustainable applications across three key sectors:
Healthcare: rapid diagnostics such as glucose monitoring at point of care
Agriculture: early detection of plant diseases
Biobased industry: optimisation of fermentation processes
A related technology, Organ-on-Chip (OoC), mimics the function of human organs on a chip, enabling researchers to test medicines more realistically, accelerating drug development and reducing animal testing.
The Netherlands: a European frontrunner
The Netherlands holds a leading international position in Lab-on-Chip. Universities, research institutes and companies in regions such as Twente, Leiden, Eindhoven and Wageningen are working together on applications with major societal impact. The challenge now is to bridge the gap between research and large-scale application.
Key barriers include regulatory validation, capital-intensive development timelines and fragmented collaboration between researchers, startups and industry. Addressing these requires a coordinated ecosystem approach.
NXTGEN Hightech accelerates the ecosystem
NXTGEN Hightech is actively working to close these gaps. Together with Health~Holland and Invest-NL, NXTGEN Hightech brings together startups, scaleups, research institutions and hospitals to accelerate the route from development to application.
Within the NXTGEN Biomed programme, projects Biomed02 (Lab-on-Chip) and Biomed03 (Organ-on-Chip) are specifically focused on building this ecosystem: connecting partners, enabling shared facilities and attracting investment to the sector.
"A key conclusion of our collaboration is that more early-stage MedTech investment is needed in Europe. Startups need to engage with pharmaceutical companies or other potential customers earlier, and regulation and standardisation need to better support these innovations."
Yvonne Greeuw, sr. investment manager, Invest-NL Deep Tech Fund
Read the full story and watch the video on the Invest-NL website:
Bron: InvestNL