Zebrafish and Chips

Have you ever wondered why drug development takes so long and costs so much?
New medicines cost billions and take years to pass regulatory hurdles. The current system often falls short as biological differences between animals and humans means that animal models do not fully reflect human diseases and are not efficient predictors of human disease responses. Organ-on-a-chip devices are an exciting new technology to investigate diseases using human cells that are grown in transparent microchips. This offers an alternative to animal experimentation and has potential to accelerate drug discovery

Zebrafish develop their immune system at an early embryonic stage and it closely matches that of a human. The immune system plays a key role in driving inflammation, which leads to conditions such as obesity and alzheimer’s. Zebrafish embryos are translucent, have an immune system and can be genetically modified. This allows us to understand how inflammation occurs in a living system using non-invasive techniques, leading to the development of new drugs to fight these conditions.

Modern medical research still depends on animal experiments. Can we really justify inflicting suffering on one species to benefit another in the day and age? John Meredith from Understanding Animal Research will try.