Science is Getting Closer To a World Without Animal Testing (ft.com) 24
Academics and pharmaceutical companies hope that technology based on human cells will help them phase mice and monkeys out of their labs. From a report: The umbrella term for the new field is microphysiological systems or MPS, which includes tumoroids, organoids and organs-on-a-chip. Organoids are grown from stem cells to create 3D tissue in a dish resembling miniature human organs; heart organoids beat like the real thing, for example. Organs-on-a-chip are plastic blocks lined with stem cells and a circuit that stimulates the mechanics of an organ. "We need to move away from animals in a systematic way," says Salim Abdool Karim, South Africa's leading infectious disease expert. "Thatâ...âinvolves regulators being given the data to show that non-animal biological systems will give us compatible, if not better, information." Nathalie Brandenburg co-founded Swiss start-up Sun Bioscience in 2016 to create standard versions of organoids, which makes it easier to trust that results are comparable, and convince scientists and regulators to use them. "When we started we had to tell people what organoids were," she says, referring to the early stage of her research journey.
In the past two years, and particularly as scientists emerged from lockdowns -- when many had time to read up on the technology -- demand from large pharmaceutical companies for Sun's products has soared, she says. Companies are becoming more interested in reducing their reliance on animals for ethical reasons, says Arron Tolley, chief executive of Aptamer Group, which creates artificial antibodies for use in diagnostics and drugs. "People are becoming more responsible now, from a corporate governance point of view, and looking to remove animal testing when necessary," he says. Using larger animals, such as monkeys, is particularly problematic, Tolley adds. "The bigger and cuter they get, the more people are aware of the impact." Rare diseases are especially fertile ground for models based on human tissues, says James Hickman, chief scientist at Hesperos, an organ-on-a-chip company based in Florida. "There are 7,000 rare diseases and only 400 are being actively researched because there are no animal models," Hickman says. "We're not just talking about replacing animals or reducing animals, these systems fill a void where animal models don't exist."
In the past two years, and particularly as scientists emerged from lockdowns -- when many had time to read up on the technology -- demand from large pharmaceutical companies for Sun's products has soared, she says. Companies are becoming more interested in reducing their reliance on animals for ethical reasons, says Arron Tolley, chief executive of Aptamer Group, which creates artificial antibodies for use in diagnostics and drugs. "People are becoming more responsible now, from a corporate governance point of view, and looking to remove animal testing when necessary," he says. Using larger animals, such as monkeys, is particularly problematic, Tolley adds. "The bigger and cuter they get, the more people are aware of the impact." Rare diseases are especially fertile ground for models based on human tissues, says James Hickman, chief scientist at Hesperos, an organ-on-a-chip company based in Florida. "There are 7,000 rare diseases and only 400 are being actively researched because there are no animal models," Hickman says. "We're not just talking about replacing animals or reducing animals, these systems fill a void where animal models don't exist."
I don't think you will ever get rid of it (Score:3)
Re: I don't think you will ever get rid of it (Score:2)
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Right because lab animals are some sort of major animal population base.
Rats, rabbits, and pigs arent going anywhere with or without this and given that many of the minimal number of chimps https://releasechimps.org/abou... [releasechimps.org]. being used for science are caught in the wild this will probably help their numbers in the wild.
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yea. Us.
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in some cases after computer modeling and testing against synthetic tissues in a lab (microphysiological systems), we'll be able to jump straight to human trials. Saves cost, shortens time to market, and reduces cruelty. I suspect we'll spend a lot more time this century reacting to infectious diseases than we originally expected. Apparently people aren't willing to accept getting pneumonia and dying as just a fact of life. So we're motivated to fight COVID, monkeypox, polio, etc.
Re:I don't think you will ever get rid of it (Score:5, Insightful)
Now now, it seems we've achieved high enough a level of misanthropy to skip it and move straight to humans. All you really need the right political environment to indemnify you of all legal consequences and you can test just about anything on humans. I mean, we were already doing it, but back then, we had to factor in the cost of lawsuits and fines into the economic planning. That investment in better PR really paid off, we can even get people pissed off at anyone who points it out.
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all batches are equal? (Score:1)
I hope they have an equal number of cultures of cells from asian, caucasian, african, and male and female.
Otherwise this is just a waste of time.
Re: all batches are equal? (Score:2)
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Around 20% of drugs [wolterskluwer.com]approved in the past year have known differences in results and outcomes based on ethnicity. This has led to an entire field of research called Pharmacogenomics [medlineplus.gov] which specifically tries to understand why people often have different reactions to drugs and the role genetics plays; by default this includes ethnicities.
A well known example is ACE Inhibitor drugs, which are designed to
Good news people we replaced the test animals (Score:2)
by full body human clones!
organ-on-a-chip? (Score:3)
Are they not satisfied into integrating the network, sound, video, sata, usb, PS/2, serial and modem into the chipset? do they really need to integrate the user on it as well?
Article paywalled...anyone got a link? (Score:2)
This solves only part of the problem (Score:2)
When developing new drugs, animal testing answers several questions. But this technique addresses only question #1 (and maybe #2) below.
1) What is the molecular mechanism behind the disease?
2) How does a new candidate treatment 'fix' the disease by interfering with the cause of breakage (antagonist) or by replacing a broken component (agonist)?
3) How can we measure the disease's progression, or after treatment, the healing of diseased tissues in all affected tissues?
4) Does the candidate treatment cause to
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Right on. (Score:2)
I'm glad animal testing was possible, and I'll be glad to see it to the door. Same for fossil fuels. I'm glad they got us where we are, and I'll be glad to see them recede.
Fine with me (Score:2)
Don't worry (Score:2)
Don't worry, the cosmetics industry will pick up the slack.
I'm not in favor of animal testing (Score:2)
They just get nervous and give the wrong answers.
Humans are animals. (Score:2)