New NYC 'Liver ICU' Lab Transforming Liver Disease Treatments

NEW YORK, Oct. 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Ochre Bio, a biotechnology company developing RNA therapeutics for chronic liver disease, has opened a unique perfusion 'Liver ICU' lab in the Alexandria Centre for Life Sciences.

The 'Liver ICU' is capable of running multiple simultaneous perfusions, where donor livers are connected to specialist machines that circulate warm blood, rich in oxygen and nutrients. It is the first platform of its kind designed to test drug candidates in human organs under near physiological conditions.

Quin Wills, CEO and Founder of Ochre, said: "Every year, 1.5 million people die of chronic liver disease. The only true cure today is a transplant. But with only about 40,000 done globally, liver medicine has become a medical lottery — not healthcare.

"At Ochre, we knew that in order to have better medicine, we needed to study human biology properly. This means generating large and high-quality datasets and reimagining clinical trials. But between those two pillars — the data and the clinic — lies a valley of death. It's where ideas go to die between a bench and the bedside. Traditionally, we fill that void with animal studies which cannot predict human outcomes. At Ochre, we do it differently. We study human livers, kept alive and functioning in our ICU upstairs — where we are, in effect, running the clinical trial before the clinical trial.

"This kind of work can only be done here — in the United States — because of a remarkable act of generosity: organ donation. When someone consents for their liver to be used in research if not transplanted, they don't just save one life. They help us find therapies that can reduce the 1.5 million lives lost to liver disease each year."

About Ochre Bio

Ochre Bio is a biotechnology company developing novel RNA medicines for under-treated chronic liver diseases. Its proprietary discovery platform combines machine learning and big human datasets, with in-house RNA chemistry, and testing in live human donor livers. Ochre Bio is headquartered in Oxford, UK, and has research labs in New York and Taipei.

https://www.ochre-bio.com

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SOURCE Ochre Bio