Page 31 - AWSAR 2.0

Coming Soon: An Animal Model- Free System for Pharmaceutical Testing
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Dr Joyita Sarkar*
Email: joyita.scc12@gmail.com
The year is 2034, and it has been a few months since small animals are banned from being used for research. The animal research facility is having an uncommon silence. There are no animals caged, and the procedure rooms are deserted. New rules and guidelines say that no new drug is to be tested on them, and so the experiment plan and life charts are empty. New medicines will no longer require the sacrifice of innumerable hapless mice, rats, guinea pigs, hamsters, and rabbits. Small animals will be seen in the natural environment. How will this be achieved?
The answer is the availability of vital organs such as the liver, kidney, and heart as artificial and standalone organs. Their system mimics the behavior of healthy organs. It allows initial screening and testing of candidate drugs
on these artificial human organ-like systems. Failures in the experiment here will not mean death or sacrifice of a small animal. Multiple parametertestingcanbedone,andresultswill be closest possible to a human body organ.
It has led to the speculation of later stages of drug testing undergoing a drastic transformation. These later stages involving big animals, primates, and human clinical trials will soon be a passé with soon-to-be-available artificial organisms.
Come back to the current year of 2019, can you believe this? Can bioengineers make this happen? Is it possible, or is it a far-fetched dream?
I say, yes.
This is possible and very much by the year 2034.
* Dr Joyita Sarkar, Post Doctoral Fellow from Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, is pursuing her research on “Development of Novel Strategy for Stem Cell Differentiation to Hepatocyte Using Combined Approach of Epigenetic Modification and 3D Cell Culture Scaffold for Applications in Pharmaco-Toxicological Studies”. Her popular science story entitled “Coming Soon: An Animal Model-Free System for Pharmaceutical Testing” has been selected for AWSAR Award.