Re-watch the recording of the full Sartorius panel on Overcoming Animal Testing
“How do we break the walls of realizing the full potential of organoids and microtissues as an alternative to animal testing?” In line with the motto of the Falling Walls Science Summit 2024 in Berlin, Sartorius hosted a panel of dedicated experts and around 100 attendees to discuss workflows, tools and a mind shift that is needed to make human models a standard in drug development.
This article is posted on Sartorius Blog.
Animal models have been essential for the development of new treatments or vaccines for many years, offering both significant benefits but also notable limitations. Life science researchers from multiple disciplines are currently developing promising alternatives based on advanced cell models that would not only pave the way for replacing animal testing, but eventually also make drug development better.
Animal models fall short of representing true human biology and diversity.
Martha Mayo, Senior Scientist at Sartorius
“Innovative in-vitro models like organoids can recapitulate our physiology much better, thus aiding drug discovery and personalized medicine”, said Martha Mayo, senior scientist at Sartorius. “For example, patient-derived mini-organs could be utilized to screen and fight a person’s individual cancer cells.”
To better visualize these novel solutions to the audience, Uwe Marx from TissUse demonstrated his “human-on-a-chip” platform, which he brought in his pocket. His technology is a miniaturized construct, simulating the activity of multiple human organs in their true physiological content – ”at a scale 100,000-fold smaller than original organs.”
Uwe Marx from TissUse demonstrates his “human-on-a-chip” platform.
Thousands of tissues from a single donor
“Drugs based on animal models often pass pre-clinical trials as safe and then fail on humans in the clinical phases”, said Seyoum Ayehunie from MatTek Corporation. He underlined that the advantage of advanced cell models or organs-on-chips lies not only in them responding similarly to the human body, but also in their scalability. “You can create thousands of tissues from a single human donor and test different types of drugs on them simultaneously”, Ayehunie said.
Zaher Nahle from Ivyctory Group reinforced that “about 90-95 percent of drugs fail in clinical trials”, although they had perfect profiles in animal-based models. According to Nahle, the FDA's passage of the Modernization Act 2.0 in 2022 marked a significant regulatory shift, encouraging the use of advanced cell models to replace animal studies. He recognized the regulators' responsibilities, being entrusted with safety and efficacy, while emphasizing the benefits for both patients and the economy of adopting innovative technologies faster.
Human data is the gold standard
The panel, moderated by journalist Alison Abbot, agreed that organoid methodologies need to be further streamlined and workflows need to be simplified and automated to improve reliability, throughput and physiological relevance, as well as to reduce costs. Nevertheless, the panelists pointed to recent studies on diverse diseases, according to which organ-on-chips models had outperformed any type of animal model. In response to a statement from the audience, Zaher Nahle closed the panel with an appeal: “If we want to realize the full potential, we need to shift our mindset: The gold standard is not to develop drugs with animal models, but with human data”.
The gold standard is not drug development with animal models, but with human data.
Zaher Nahle, Ivyctory Group
Zaher Nahle, Ivyctory Group
About Falling Walls
Each year from 7–9 November, Falling Walls invites to its Science Summit in Berlin to explore the forefront of scientific breakthroughs and emerging trends that shape our world. This three-day gathering unites experts from various scientific disciplines to explore groundbreaking research and foster collaborative solutions for the challenges of our time. Sartorius regularly joins the Science Summit by co-hosting expert plenary tables on topics around the life sciences.
Impressions from the Event
