“Dermatologically tested”. “Clinically proven to…”. “No animals were harmed in the course of testing this product”, etcetera. We all have come in contact with these phrases, either on a new body cream bottle or a drug. While animal rights advocates have protested the use of animals to test the efficacy of some products and more people have questioned the dermatological/clinical prowess of products on the aisles, companies have also been researching better and newer ways of testing products that would meet specifications as well as solve the inherent problem without having any (side effects).
However, technology might have come through for the health sector once again as a micro chip that could help make drug testing safer, faster, cheaper — and eliminate the need for animal testing has been created. Designed by a research team led by Kevin Healy, UC Berkeley professor of engineering, the silicone chip is about 1’’ long and houses a small piece of cardiac muscle that responds to cardiovascular medications in the same way the heart muscle does inside a living human body.
Without sounding too medically/scientifically hardcore, here is my understanding of how the chip was created. Using a heart muscle grown in a lab from pluripotent (ability to multiply in other types) adult human stem cells, the structure of the chip was made to look like the geometrical (spacing) of connective tissue fibre in a living human heart. Also, just like the way nutrients and drugs ‘interact’ with human tissue through the blood vessels, microfluidic channels that can act as blood vessels have been created on both sides of the silicone where the cell matrix is constructed.
The use of adult stem cells makes the chip even more interesting. Researchers could use a patient’s own cells to test an individual’s responses to various drugs, allowing treatments to be tailored. It could also be modified to model human genetic diseases.
Image Credit: crueltyfreekitty.com
Editor’s note: Call me lily livered if you will, I am never going to feel ok with the idea of ‘wearing’ a chip under my skin! A lot of things are being ‘chipped’ these days, sometimes one imagines how life in this age would have been without all the advancements.
