Organoids—miniature copies of human organs grown from stem cells—are rapidly becoming an important tool in pharmaceuticals. They make it possible to test drugs on models that are as close as possible to a specific patient. A recent example is the tiny “beating hearts” created at Mercy Children's Hospital in Kansas City. They are already helping doctors choose the best individual treatment.
The organoid field is developing rapidly. “Organs-on-a-chip” make it possible to model the responses of the liver, lungs, intestines and other systems. Recent tests on liver chips identified the toxicity of 27 drugs that had been considered safe after animal testing.
Organoids are also being integrated with artificial intelligence, which predicts the body’s response, models immune reactions and selects promising drug combinations before laboratory testing even begins. This not only speeds up the process, but also helps prevent dangerous side effects, reduces development costs and, in the long term, could make new medicines more affordable.
Although these technologies cannot yet fully replace animals in testing, given the pace of development it is quite possible that within 10–15 years animal testing will no longer be a mandatory part of pharmaceuticals. In the U.S., the requirement for such tests has already been removed if there are high-quality alternative data.
