Mini Human Organs to Reduce Animal Use in Drug Testing

In the UK, scientists will develop mini human organs and tissues from cells taken from NHS patients to better assess the effects of drugs on the human body and reduce animal testing. The project, to be conducted in Cambridge, will involve creating organoids from tissue samples of different patients to investigate how diseases vary between individuals. This aims to contribute to determining which treatment is most effective for a particular patient. The project will be funded with £20 million from the UK Medical Research Council (MRC). Researchers will also create a library of standardized and validated organoids for use by academics and pharmaceutical companies. Clinical Professor Matthias Zilbauer from the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute noted that some human diseases are not seen in animals or manifest differently. Zilbauer stated that using models directly derived from human tissue in the drug development process could help determine which treatments work best for which patients, saying "A mouse can't tell us that." Researchers believe that even small organoids, less than a millimeter in size, can mimic the basic features of real organs and tissues, reflecting the effects of diseases and responses to drugs. Mini organs developed from diseased human tissue can be used to test whether new drug candidates can reverse disease-related changes at an earlier stage.