UK scientists to create human “mini-organs” for drug testing

Tengrinews.kz — British scientists in Cambridge are set to begin growing miniature human organs and other tissues from patients’ cells. Researchers believe this will allow medicines to be tested much more accurately and treatments to be tailored to each individual patient.
Human tissue instead of animals
According to a study published in PubMed, more than 90 percent of drugs that successfully pass animal testing later fail in human trials.
Matthias Zilbauer, Clinical Professor of Paediatric Gastroenterology at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, explains that many human diseases either do not occur in animals at all or develop differently in them.

“Because animals are not humans. We need tests and models that can show us which treatments work and for which patients, but experiments on mice cannot tell us that,” Zilbauer said.

Scientists therefore want to gradually reduce the use of animals in studying human diseases and move toward more accurate testing based on human tissues.
Researchers plan to grow organoids from patients’ cells to better understand how the same disease develops in different people and which treatments work best in each individual case.
What are organoids
Organoids are small clusters of cells grown by scientists in laboratories that can reproduce some of the characteristics of real organs and tissues.

“Researchers have been growing them for more than 10 years. Tests show that fragments measuring less than a millimeter can reflect key features of full-sized organs and tissues, including how they respond to disease and medicines,” specialists noted.

Scientists believe that organoids grown from patients’ affected tissues will make it possible to test whether a new drug can alter disease processes and quickly identify ineffective treatments at an early stage.
Which diseases will be studied
The new research will be carried out at a research center in Cambridge that has received £20 million, or approximately 12.6 billion tenge, from the UK Medical Research Council.

“Researchers will collaborate with other scientists to create a library of standardized, validated organoids. These organoids will be made available to academia and the pharmaceutical industry to help bring new medicines to the clinical stage,” the report said.

Initially, specialists will focus on inflammatory bowel diseases — ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, both chronic inflammatory conditions of the intestine.
Other teams will grow tumor tissue to study cancer treatments, as well as brain organoids for research into neurological diseases.