Lab rats have long been a mainstay of biomedical research and drug development. Now, technologies such as Emulate's Lung-on-a-Chip aim to model human biology without relying on animals. Seventeen years ago, cell biologist Donald Ingber and his colleagues at Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering submitted a paper to the journal Science describing their model human lung. It was smaller than a USB stick and made of a clear polymer slab containing narrow channels lined with the cells that line a lung's air sacs and blood vessels. When air was pumped through hollow chambers beside the channels, the device rhythmically expanded and contracted, or "breathed."
This lifelike movement was a dramatic change from earlier lung models, which typically used static cultures unable to simulate the movements essential to lung function. When exposed to inflammatory proteins and bacteria, Ingber's artificial lung reacted much as living lungs would. It was a powerful proof-of-principle demonstration of a system that could test drugs and chemicals, offering a complement and even an alternative to tissue cultures or animal testing. Even so, the editors at Science were hesitant and asked Ingber's team to also run tests in mice. The team complied and published in 2010. The paper has since been cited by nearly 5,400 other papers.
The episode reflects how animal models have long been the default in modern biomedical research. That is changing. Ilka Maschmeyer, a translational toxicology researcher and executive at the German biotech company Tiss Use, recalled that a pharmaceutical company was denied permission by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to run a clinical trial because it had presented only animal data. The FDA wanted data from organs-on-a-chip or a comparable alternative. "It's rare still," says Maschmeyer, "but I think it's going to be more and more frequent."
Collectively known as NAMs, these alternatives are gaining ground. Most have yet to be rigorously tested, but early studies suggest their potential. The challenge now is less about technical quality and more about practical next steps, including standardizing systems and conducting head-to-head comparisons with animal experiments. Outperforming animal models is necessary but not sufficient for widespread adoption.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing