Artificial human Farming
Farms
of 'artificial humans' to replace animal testing within three years, say
experts as they develop microchips which mimic our organs perfectly
By
Corey Charlton for MailOnline
- Artificial humans with interacting organs to be 'farmed' for use in drug tests
- Developers hope the technology will replace live animal testing by 2017
- Smartphone sized microchips could replicate up to 10 major human organs
Experimental drugs will be used on farms of artificial
humans as a replacement for live animal testing within three years, experts
claim.
Smartphone-sized microchips replicating human lungs, livers
and other organs are being used to test the body's reaction to new drugs.
A Chinese researcher injects
a monkey with solution at a laboratory in Guangzhou. New technology aims to
replace live animal tests within three years
The artificial organs work together to replicate
an organic human system
Across the world, more than 100million animals
are controversially used every year to test chemicals, food and drugs before
they hit the market.
The technology bears similarities to the 1999
science fiction movie The Matrix, in which humans are kept in 'farms' in order
to harvest energy from their bodies.
It was the highest number of scientific animal
experiments conducted since 1982 and came three years after the Coalition
pledged in its programme for government to ‘work to reduce the use of animals
in scientific research’.
Chips emulating two and four organ systems are already
being used, with future versions expected to extend to replicate all the vital
functioning organs.
Uwe Marx, a
Berlin-based tissue engineer for developers TissUse, said the development of a
'10 organ chip' was expected within three years in a move that could
'revolutionise drug development'.
Mr Marx said: 'In the future, it will be possible, for
example, to significantly reduce the number of animals used in pharmaceutical
research and to substitute current alternative methods to animal testing.'
If their system was approved, he said it would 'close down
most of the animal-testing laboratories worldwide', according to the Sunday
Times.
Speaking at the World Congress on Alternatives and Animal
Use in the Life Sciences in Prague, the Times reported Mr Marx as saying he
hoped to create 'human farms made up of hundreds of the machines'.
A
scene from the movie The Matrix showing the farms where humans are grown to
generate energy
Last year an EU ban on the sale of cosmetics developed
through animal testing came into force. However, the number of scientific
animal experiments carried out in the UK is growing.
Home Office statistics show that 4.11million experiments
were carried out in university, charity and commercial labs in 2012 – an 8 per
cent jump on the previous year.
