{"id":36797,"date":"2015-02-03T11:31:51","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T11:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.massarate.ma\/?p=36797"},"modified":"2015-02-03T11:31:51","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T11:31:51","slug":"organs-on-a-chip-aim-to-eliminate-animal-testing-from-drug-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.massarate.ma\/organs-on-a-chip-aim-to-eliminate-animal-testing-from-drug-research.html","title":{"rendered":"“Organs-on-a-Chip” Aim to Eliminate Animal Testing from Drug Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

$\"\u201cOrgans-on-a-Chip\u201d$ <\/p>\n

At some level, the key to this future increasingly aims\u00a0to\u00a0emulate the physiology of the human body with\u00a0microfluidic chips to better screen the\u00a0drugs most\u00a0likely to work for us.<\/p>\n

Fraunhofer, a German research organization, for example,\u00a0recently announced<\/a> they have developed what they call a “synthetic organism on\u00a0a miniature chip” to\u00a0stand in for the\u00a0human body in the testing of new drugs.<\/p>\n

Researchers implant human cells from different organs into wells in the chip and connect them to each other by tiny\u00a0canals. A micro-pump\u00a0stands in for the heart,\u00a0circulating cell culture between the “organs” to more closely synthesize these systems in vivo.How is this achieved?<\/p>\n

Currently, animal testing is the\u00a0first stage of drug research. However, different species interact with test drugs differently, and of course,\u00a0animals are not humans. Without a\u00a0highly\u00a0accurate\u00a0way to determine\u00a0whether a drug is beneficial or detrimental\u00a0to\u00a0humans, researchers are reliant\u00a0on\u00a0human trials.<\/p>\n

Ultimately for the thousands of chemicals tested over years in the lab, very few make it to market. And of those, a few more may be recalled after trials due to previously undetected side effects.<\/p>\n

In the past,\u00a0one proposed solution is to test drug candidates\u00a0on human cells (e.g., from the liver or heart) in a petri dish. However, this\u00a0method doesn’t accurately portray the systemic nature of our innards. Cells live within three-dimensional\u00a0organs, which are in turn part of a complex systems\u00a0interacting with and dependent upon other organs throughout the body.<\/p>\n

The hope is that Fraunhofer’s new system can better simulate that bodily ecosystem and increase the accuracy and speed with which we can screen new drugs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe use cell samples from various sexes and ethnicities. We can set variations in body size and weight as desired on a scale of 1:100,000,\u201d says\u00a0Dr. Frank Sonntag of the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS. By studying the metabolic products of cells and how they effect other cells, Fraunhofer claims results may be more predictive than animal-based experiments.<\/p>\n

Of course, as you might expect, Fraunhofer is not alone in their quest<\/a> to better simulate the human body for drug testing. Last year, Donald Ingber of Harvard’s Wyss Institute founded Emulate\u2014a startup to mass produce a “human on a chip” on a transparent piece of microfluidic silicone rubber.<\/p>\n

Like Fraunhofer’s chip, Emulate’s device places human cells (lung, liver, intestine, skin, kidneys, and eyes) on the chip, connects them via\u00a0micro-channels, and pumps fluid through the system.<\/p>\n

Others, including Oxford University’s Virtual Assay project, are working to more closely simulate the human body in silica\u2014using raw computing power to bring the body to life by algorithm and\u00a0test\u00a0drugs on virtual heart cells (and maybe soon skin and brain cells).<\/p>\n

How close are these technologies to implementation? For now, they remain strictly experimental. In the coming years, they’ll have to show their mettle, prove they are an accurate predictor of what happens in the body. And the truth is, in the near future, they will remain approximations of a complex system.<\/p>\n

“If you think about it, a pill is swallowed to get into the intestine, absorbed through the gut and then has to get to where the disease is, whether in the brain, eye or lungs,” Richard Seabrook, head of business development at the Wellcome Trust, told the Guardian <\/em>last year<\/a>. “So during this process chemicals are exposed to proteins, enzymes and cells so it is hard for any technology to predict reliably how it will interact with the human body.”<\/p>\n

However, while such devices\u00a0may not be a perfect simulation, they should speed up the discovery process and make it easier to find new medicines that are more likely to work in human trials\u2014and hopefully, in humans more generally.<\/p>\n

singularityhub<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"