Microchip to Replace Research Animals

To reduce the number of animals used in the development of new drugs, researchers have developed a microchip that serves as an in vivo surrogate, reducing the use of animals, speeding drug development, lowering costs, and increasing the efficiency of preclinical testing.

The 22 mm microfluidic circuit, developed by scientists at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY, USA), is designed to assess the effects of a new drug compound in animals or humans in a high-throughput manner. The idea is to run the chip as though it were a rat or dog and to be able to tell if this particular animal is going to be appropriate for further testing.

The microfluidic unit contains an arrangement of interconnected "organ” or "tissue” compartments. Each contains a culture of living cells from animals or humans to mimic the function of particular organs and tissues, such as liver, heart, lung, or fat cells. The compartments are connected by micro channels through which a blood substitute, or culture medium, circulates. The test drug is added to this culture medium and circulates around the device. Its effects on the cells within each compartment can then be measured.

"What we are trying to do is to mimic what goes on in the body on a micro scale,” explained Dr. Leslie Benet, professor of biopharmaceutical sciences at the University of California San Francisco (USA; www.ucsf.edu). Dr. Benet believes the chip will save a lot of animal studies but will not eliminate them. "At the moment, we don't know which animal is going to be useful. So the industry often carries out animal tests that turn out not to be predictive at all.”

The chip should provide data on how a drug is handled by the body, how it is eliminated, and how it is metabolized. According to Dr. Benet, by assessing a drug's effects on different tissues and by being able to mimic the normal interplay of enzymes and transporters, the microchip should be more efficient than standard cell culture experiments. Dr. Benet is chairman of the scientific advisory board for a new corporation founded to commercialize the microchip.




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