A £20 million project will grow organoids from NHS patients' cells, potentially drastically reducing the number of animals in research and accelerating the development of personalized medicine.
British scientists are launching an ambitious project to grow miniature human organs, known as organoids, which could radically change the way new drugs are developed and tested. The research center in Cambridge will use these tissue clusters, grown directly from the cells of patients in the UK's National Health Service (NHS), to determine why diseases manifest differently in different people and which treatments are most effective for them.
The project is funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) with £20 million, and aims to create a standardized library of organoids accessible to academia and the pharmaceutical industry. This move is part of the broader strategy of Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government to accelerate the reduction of animal use in scientific research.
This approach marks a significant departure from the traditional reliance on animal models. Historical data show that more than 90% of drugs that successfully pass animal tests subsequently fail in human clinical trials. Matthias Zilbauer, Professor of Clinical Paediatric Gastroenterology at the Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge, highlights the key problem.
"Many human diseases do not occur in animals at all, or they manifest differently because they are not humans. We want tests and models that can tell us which treatments work and in which patients, and a mouse cannot tell us that."
Zilbauer's team is starting with organoids for inflammatory bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, but the project will cover a wide range of tissues-from clusters of beating heart tissue to electrically active brain cells. Other teams will focus on growing tumors to better treat cancer.
Professor Zilbauer emphasizes that animal testing will not be completely abandoned in the near future, but he expects concrete results. "This will have a significant impact on the number of animals we use and on the way we will develop new drugs in the future," he said. "We are not claiming that animals will no longer be used at all in the near future, because there are still certain questions that cannot be tested on these new models. However, the reduction in numbers is very real."
Last year, 2.54 million procedures on animals were conducted in the UK, a 3.8% decrease compared to 2024. Although mice, rats, fish, and birds dominate in more than 90% of cases, one percent of procedures involve specially protected species such as cats, dogs, horses, and monkeys.
Innovate UK has awarded an additional £2 million for nine projects aimed at reducing the number of animals in safety tests. One of these is led by VivoSphere, a company that grows heart cells in tiny gel spheres. Traditional safety tests can involve 50 to 100 animals, including guinea pigs, rabbits, and dogs.
"If a drug is not good, there is less risk for both animals and patients," said Yuan Tian, CTO of VivoSphere. Dr. Juliet Dukes from the charity Replacing Animals in Research sees even greater potential. "One of the huge advantages of organoids, organs-on-chips, and other in vitro microphysiological systems is that, unlike animal models, they have real potential to deliver on the promise of truly personalized medicine for every patient. It's all very exciting," she said.
