
Advancing Drug Discovery through the Development of 3D Mini-Organs
Research by biological scientists at the University of Southampton has led to the development of an innovative method of testing new drugs without using animals. Tissue from human volunteers is used in the laboratory to develop a variant of versatile stem cells. These can be induced to group together to form human ‘mini-organs’ such as the pancreas, liver or heart, a few millimetres in size. Researchers can use these human ‘mini-organs’ to test and analyse the results of targeting diseases with new drugs accurately, quickly and safely.