Human liver chip methods were recently found to be seven to eight times more accurate than animal tests in identifying liver toxicities in 22 drugs that later were either given blackbox labeling or pulled from the market despite being identified as safe by animal test results.
Today, April 24th, is World Day for Animals in Laboratories—a day
for honest and open discussion about the suffering animals
experience in laboratories. And make no doubt, animals in labs do
suffer every day of their lives.
Having worked at the Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Army for
more than a decade, I have been exposed to every kind of animal
experimentation imaginable. But there is one experiment that
especially haunts me.
I once attended a neuroscience conference featuring a talk about
spinal cord injury. The presenter showed a clip of his experiment in
which he crushed a cat’s spinal cord and was recording the cat’s
movement on a treadmill. He forcibly implanted electrodes into the
cat’s brain. She was struggling to keep upright, dragging her
paralyzed legs on the treadmill. She repeatedly fell off the
machine. At one point, the experimenter lifted her up to reposition
her on the treadmill and the cat did something that was utterly
unexpected. She rubbed her head against the experimenter’s hand.
I said a quiet prayer that her spinal cord injury wiped out her
ability to feel pain in her legs. I couldn’t help but wonder if
anyone else in the audience noticed what I did:
Even at the peak of her suffering, the cat was seeking comfort from
the very hand that caused her pain. Ten days later, she was killed,
and her brain dissected.
It’s difficult for us to imagine what life is like for these
animals. This is because the public does not have access to these
labs. But every day, these animals live in fear, pain, sadness,
grief, and loneliness.
The good news is that there is a way to end this suffering. A much,
much better way.
It’s common knowledge that results from experiments on animals don’t
translate to humans very well. Despite the millions of tax dollars
spent on crushing the spines of animals, for example, there is not a
single treatment for people with spinal cord injury that works. More
than nine in ten drugs that are safe and effective in animals fail
in humans.
People suffer from animal experimentation, as well. In fact, there
is no effective treatment for most human illnesses. It is for this
reason that there has been a tremendous boon recently in the
development of testing methods that are based on human biology.
Human chip models, 3D printed human tissues and organs, and
cognitive computing technologies can significantly improve the drug
development process. These complex models more faithfully
recapitulate human physiology than animal tests and have the
potential to predict human effectiveness and safety much more
accurately. For example, human liver chip methods were recently
found to be seven to eight times more accurate than animal tests in
identifying liver toxicities in 22 drugs that later were either
given blackbox labeling or pulled from the market despite being
identified as safe by animal test results.
There is more to be done in the development of these human-relevant
testing methods, but there is hope. We believe the future is bright.
At CCS, we are working hard to make this future a reality as soon as
possible.
In the spirit of World Day for Animals in Laboratories, we invite
you to join us.
Here are some ways you can help: