Science is Getting Closer To a World Without Animal Testing

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. "Thata...ainvolves 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."

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