XONA’s ‘Artificial Brain On A Chip’ May Help Solve Neurological Puzzles Such As Alzheimer’s

Anne Taylor, Ph.D.

More than a decade ago, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientist Anne Taylor, Ph.D., then a bioengineering graduate student at the University of California at Irvine, determined she wanted to make a contribution to neuroscience from an engineering standpoint.

So she invented a device that her husband, attorney Brad Taylor, says acts “like an artificial brain on a chip.”

That evolved into a company: XONA Microfluidics. XONA moved its R&D operations to North Carolina when Anne Taylor accepted a position as assistant professor of bioengineering at UNC in 2010.

Anne Taylor invented the device in the laboratory of Noo Li Jeon, Ph.D., who is now in Seoul, South Korea. It’s made from a silicone compound called polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). An inch square, it has two tiny chambers connected by microgrooves.

Carl Cotman, professor of neuroscience at UC-Irvine, and a world-renowned expert in the field, helped guide Anne Taylor’s research. Anne Taylor, Jeon, and Cotman are all credited as co-inventors.

Neurons are placed in the chambers. They grow and shoot out axons, the appendage that transmits signals away from the neurons. The microgrooves are just large enough to fit axons. That isolates them for study.

In a lab culture dish, neurons grow randomly, Brad Taylor explained in an interview with the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. A previous method of studying them was “clunky, took a lot of preparation time, and wasn’t a very useful tool.”

A new window of observation

XONA’s device, on the other hand, provides a new window of observation for scientists studying Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases and processes.

UC-Irvine lab technician Joseph Harris, now a XONA company manager, tested the utility of the device and found there was a demand for it. So the Taylors and Harris held their first business meeting at a Starbucks and formed XONA (the letters of axon scrambled).

An early seed-capital deal with Merck’s Millipore, which sells chemicals for applications in labs and industry, from biosciences to cosmetics, helped launch the startup with a sales-distribution deal in 2008. “They have a great distribution network,” Brad Taylor said.

In North Carolina, the company applied for a Phase 1 Small Business Technology Transfer Grant from the National Institute of Mental Health in 2011 and was awarded $678,765. Then, in April 2016, it won a Phase 2 grant of more than $1.95 million to continue its R&D.

The company also found the North Carolina life science talent pool attractive. “Great talent comes out of UNC, Duke, and North Carolina State University. We were able to interview a lot of people. We appreciated the talent pool,” said Brad Taylor.

He admits keeping a startup company going is “challenging.” The company is debt-free and currently has no outside investors, though the founders would consider investors if the deal were right.

“We need to do more marketing. So far it’s basically been word-of-mouth. So we would entertain outside funding.”

The R&D needed to diversify XONA’s product line so it could be even more useful to neuroscientists is also expensive, he added.

The company is “very hopeful it will soon be able to automate” the labor-intensive process of manufacturing the devices, he said.

The original device sells for $150 for a five-pack. More than 300 laboratories globally have purchased it. This past year XONA received a European patent on the device, which is already patented in the United States. It now offers a range of products based on the device.

Brad Taylor is confident that XONA is ready to roll.

“We own this space,” he says.