Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have potentially found a way to eliminate animal testing when developing new drugs.
To do so, the researchers created bionic chips that contain human tissue, mimicking our physiology, and inserted them into the process of testing potential cancer treatments, avoiding the need for animal testing.
“Drug development is a long and expensive endeavor that is defined by multiple failures,” said Prof. Yaakov Nahmias, director of Hebrew University’s Grass Center for Bioengineering and founder of Tissue Dynamic.
“The main reason for this failure is that clinical experiments are ultimately based on minimal information gained from animal experiments, which often fail to replicate the human response,” he said in a press release.
Animal testing on mice and rats is a process that depends on the success of the rodent trials to transfer over to clinical trials, although they don’t share the same genetics, physiology or metabolism.
Although the type of technology chosen by the Hebrew University researchers has been in use for over 30 years, Nahmias and his team incorporated microscopic sensors into the human tissue, allowing them to monitor the body’s response to specific drug treatment in a clear and precise manner.
“What makes our technology unique is that it allows us to go beyond what was ever possible with animal experimentation,” Nahmias said. “We are now able to insert microsensors that offer us real-time information on how drugs work and when they stop working.”
The researchers utilized the new technology to prove that the commonly used cancer treatment, cisplatin, causes a buildup of fat within human kidneys, which could be potentially dangerous.
To combat the negative effects of cisplatin, the researchers combined the chemotherapy treatment with empaglifozin, a drug that limits the absorption of sugar in the kidneys, in turn reducing fatty buildup and damage.
This represented the first application of a bionic chip being used to develop a safe cancer treatment without the need for animal testing, which often results in cruelty.
“This groundbreaking technology has the potential to significantly reduce the testing and production time for drugs, while also avoiding the need to test animals in the lab,” Nahmias said. “This will save time, money and certainly unnecessary suffering.”
“Our company, Tissue Dynamic, continues to develop innovative tools to aid in drug development, and we are now moving ahead with clinical testing and working toward regulatory approval of specific drugs as a new way to treat cancer,” he said.
The team’s findings were recently published in Science Translational Medicine, an interdisciplinary medical journal.