Merry Christmas from Myomaker Bio
From our CEO Mark Lewis: As the year comes to a close, I’ve been taking a moment to reflect on what this year has meant for Myomaker Bio. For those new here Myomaker Bio is a contract research organisation specialising in pre-clinical muscle biology. 2025 has been a whirlwind for us where we: 🎉 Welcomed our first customers🎉 Moved into new offices from Bedford Heights (Thanks Tim King and Investcope Ltd. – was great working with you in the formative stages of Myomaker Bio Ltd.) to LUinc.🎉 Formalised our spin-out from Loughborough University🎉 Took up space in Victoria House – an amazing facility from the Pioneer Group Grace Crocker🎉 Completed the Pioneer Group Launch Programme and National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) CRACKIT STRATIS project (special thanks to Cathy Vickers, Abi Spear and Dstl)🎉 Expanded our staff to 2 full members of staff (Dr Kerry Chaplin and Dr Millie Coward) with new hires planned for 2026 None of this would have been possible without the support of: • Our early customers who championed our approach• Our advisors who have moved onto pastures new – Cliff Murray and Simon Cruwys and those still on the journey with us – Rowan Rimington and Sophie Dale-Black PhD• The valued input of LU colleagues Nick Gostick, Peter Collier and Dan Parsons• My great friend and co-founder, Dr. Andrew Capel And many other friends who have, by their kindness and willingness to listen, helped us along the way. As we head into the new year, we are laser-focused on delivering the best outcome we can to our customers whilst finalising our first investment round. We will ensure that we add to the community we are part of at Victoria House whilst we find new people to work with – thanks to Lee Williams and Steve Street who have come on board as advisors to help us through these next stages. Finally, it has been great fun and we will always try to ensure that we enjoy what we do! Thank you for following along, supporting us, and being part of the journey, Merry Christmas!
FDA Modernization Act 3.0
The FDA Modernization Act 3.0 is an important step forward for preclinical innovation. By updating regulations to replace references to “animal” testing with broader “nonclinical” language, the Act further enables New Approach Methodologies (#NAMs) such as human-relevant in vitro models and computational tools. This creates regulatory space for approaches that better reflect human biology.The need is clear: many drugs that succeed in animal studies still fail in humans, highlighting the demand for more predictive models. For Myomaker Bio, this shift is especially impactful. NAM-based muscle and neuromuscular models can deliver earlier insight into efficacy and safety and improve translational confidence. While animal testing remains part of development, this legislation accelerates innovation toward more human-relevant science. Dr. Andrew Capel (CSO) says ” This announcement is another landmark moment in the transition away from animal model use within drug development. However, the emphasis will now be upon bioengineers to develop assays that deliver highly consistent and scalable human relevant outputs. Our focus at Myomaker Bio will be to accelerate industry acceptance by demonstrating that the predictive capacity of our systems is high, and that human tissue models can positively impact key decision making processes within preclinical testing.”
We have moved!
🎉 Exciting Milestone for Our Team! 🎉 Myomaker Bio is excited to announce our move into new premises at Victoria House, London, a space that supports our growing team and expanding scientific capabilities. At Myomaker Bio, we engineer human muscle organs that replicate real muscle structure and function. 🧬 Our Capabilities:• Bespoke Testing Assays• Muscle Function & Morphology• Gene & Protein Expression• Media Analysis Our platforms help partners explore muscle biology across health, exercise, disease, injury and regeneration, from developing therapies for muscle-specific conditions to de-risking off-target effects. We’re thrilled to begin this next chapter in our new home.
New Technical Note Series
We are excited to share the first technical note in our new series exploring how bioengineered human skeletal muscle can be used as a reliable, human-relevant platform to study chemical injury, regeneration, and drug response. Technical Note #1: Barium Chloride (BaCl2): Isomorphic Mimicry Mechanism Key Takeaway of the Series:1. Bioengineered muscle (and neuromuscular) systems reproduce human injury, repair, and pharmacological responsiveness.2. Distinct classes of compounds, injury agents, anabolic nutrients, anti-inflammatory mediators, and metabolic stressors elicit predictable, quantifiable outcomes in tissue function
TECH JOURNAL Neuroscience iPSC-derived models for drug discovery and research
We are delighted to be part of Axol Biosciences latest technology journal. This showcases our use of axoCellsTM iPSC-derived Motor Neurons as a platform for human neuromuscular junction modeling. Find us on page 20! Download the Journal here: https://hubs.la/Q03SlQHZ0
We are heading to ELRIG’S Drug Discovery 2025
We’re heading to Liverpool for Drug Discovery 2025! 21–22 October 2025 Liverpool, UK Meet our team in the Breakthrough Zone: Mark Lewis, CEO Dr. Andrew Capel, CSO We’ll be sharing how our assays monitor muscle biology in health, exercise, disease, injury, and regeneration. Let’s talk about how we can support your next breakthrough.