Say Goodbye to Lab Rats

Organ-on-a-Chip technology could portend end of heinous animal testing.

I know medical research demands a certain level of animal testing, but I, for one, am not a fan. That’s why I was thrilled to come across this item on Futurism.com that detailed a partnership between the FDA and a company called Emulate, which makes “organ-on-chip” technology as a promising substitute for animal testing.

The technology emulates organ function on a device smaller than a human thumb, the article says, and it opens up the possibility of testing drugs on chips in a way that’s far more accurate than animal testing and obviously far less controversial. The FDA plans to start up using Emulate’s liver chips, which the article says makes sense since that’s the vital organ where most drugs get broken down. The Futurism piece says Emulate’s organ-on-a-chip technology doesn’t stop at the liver—the company is developing chip designs for lung, intestine, skin, kidney, heart, and brain.

I am rooting for this collaboration—a successful partnership could save the lives of humans and animals. You can’t beat that.