Organoids instead of volunteers

Novoheart Grows Human heart Tissue in a laboratory for drug testing

Roman Okashin, Hi-tech+

Tests of new drugs on animals are not only cruel, but also often ineffective, as they can give a false result. The biotech company Novoheart is struggling with both problems at once. Her artificial hearts should be a preliminary stage before testing on live volunteers. And due to the fact that they are grown from human stem cells, experts promise an accurate result for clinical use.

Humanity has been given a great price to understand the importance of preliminary drug tests. Take, for example, the German sleeping pill Thalidomide, which hit the market in 1961. It has been reported that it is safe for pregnant women, although this has not been verified. Later it turned out that Thalidomide critically affects the fetus. As a result, 10,000 children were born with serious physical disabilities.

Novoheart is also working to ensure that such incidents do not happen again in the future. The company develops effective methods of drug research on artificial analogues of the human heart. Experts call them organoid chambers or mini-hearts.

Scientists take human stem cells and transform them into cardiac tissue. It can be used to create miniature pumps that mimic the work of the heart. Samples of medicines are tested on them.

The creators of the method say that it changes the approach to preclinical drug trials, writes Wired. According to research published in the journal Bioengineering, only 10% of drugs that have passed preclinical animal trials reach the market. This means that most of the drugs being tested are toxic. Artificial hearts allow you to reject them immediately. At the same time, the method is being improved. Now Novoheart works with stacks of 4 hearts in each. This allows you to noticeably accelerate research.

MIT also proposed a way to reduce the testing time of new drugs by half and do without animal testing. Some artificial organs cannot yet accurately reflect the effects of drugs on the body, they believe. But the missing data will be provided by a mathematical model.

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