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from the that's-chips-with-everything-please dept.
Researchers who are developing miniature models of human organs on plastic chips have touted the nascent technology as a way to replace animal models. Although that goal is still far off, it is starting to come into focus as large pharmaceutical companies begin using these in vitro systems in drug development.
"We are pretty excited about the interest we get from pharma," says Paul Vulto, co-founder of the biotechnology company Mimetas in Leiden, the Netherlands. "It's much quicker than I'd expected." His company is currently working with a consortium of three large pharmaceutical companies that are testing drugs on Mimetas's kidney-on-a-chip. At the Organ-on-a-Chip World Congress in Boston, Massachusetts, last week, Mimetas was one among many drug and biotechnology firms and academic researchers showing off the latest advances in miniature model organs that respond to drugs and diseases in the same way that human organs such as heart and liver do.
Is this a better approach than mini 3D-printed organs that use a patient's stem cells?
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday July 19 2015, @06:48PM
Potentially life-saving technology, and the first place we go is cannibalism? (Of course, if it never was a part of an actual human being, would it technically be cannibalism? And the FA does say this is meant to replace animals. Hmmm. )