Alternative methods to animal testing. No cages, no animals, no torture to study the efficacy and side effects of new drugs. Just a 3D culture plate, on which it is possible to grow hundreds of micro-organs, with small tubes that connect them together as if they were blood vessels, giving the possibility to test 35 compounds at the same time. It is a prototype made by Paul Vulto, researcher at Leiden University, in the Netherlands, and co-founder of the start-up Mimetas, born in 2011.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
Alternative methods to animal testing. No cage, no animals, no torture for study the efficacy and side effects of new drugs. solo a 3D culture plate, on which it is possible to grow hundreds of micro-organs, with small tubes that connect them together as if they were blood vessels, giving the possibility of test 35 compounds simultaneously. It is a prototype made by Paul Vulto, researcher at Leiden University, in the Netherlands, and co-founder of the start-up Mimetas, born in 2011.
These chips could be used by the pharmaceutical industries as a method more cheap and fast to make toxicological and cytotoxic tests on new molecules, as an alternative to the use of animals in the laboratory. "We have imitated human organs in a microscopic space - explains Vulto in a note - these organs contained in the chip can be used for determine the efficacy or toxicity and side effects of new drugs better and faster ".
The Mimetas device was born not only as alternative to animal testing, but also as an aid to select the best individual therapy for patients, with live drug testing on diseased cells. This is possible because the chips provide what currently most resembles a human being. Now, the next phase of the project involves the construction of culture plates that allow for test thousands of drugs at the same time.
The research was carried out thanks to the support of Division of Analytical Biosciences and Netherlands Metabolomics Centre, While the Dutch Foundation for Applied Sciences (STW) awarded her a $ 200.000 grant to bring it to market. "Mimetas is the result of the joint efforts of Paul Vulto, Thomas Hankemeier e Bas Trietsch of the University of Leiden, and the entrepreneur Jos Joore“, Concludes the note. Thanks to all of them, it is possible to hope in a world with labs without cages.
Roberta Ragni
