(TNS) — Developing new drugs has involved animal testing since Aristotle, but the University of Pittsburgh is taking a lead in changing all that.
The university has been awarded a federal $7.8 million grant to create the Pitt Translational Center for Microphysiology Systems, which will test whether using human cells can replace animals in determining whether and how well a new drug works.
If successful, researchers could avoid all the costs and ethical landmines of animal testing while allowing doctors to tailor treatments to the individual.
“It’s going to be a game changer in testing drugs for toxicity and efficacy,” said D. Lansing Taylor, the project’s lead researcher and director of the University of Pittsburgh Drug Discovery Institute. “It’s precision medicine.”
Pitt is among four centers to receive the awards.
Developing new medicines is a costly, drawn out process, lasting over 10 years and costing $2.6 billion to bring a single compound to the corner drug store from the lab bench, according to a 2022 study that appeared in the journal Cells Tissues Organs. Animal testing is central to the process while failure rates exceed 90%.
By comparison, the emerging field of microphysiology systems uses specially treated human cells from patients with a specific disease to test how well drugs work, before the compound is ever administered as a medicine. What’s more, adoption of the testing method would save money — 10% to 26% savings in drug research and development costs were anticipated, according to the 2022 study.
The Food and Drug Administration has a longstanding commitment to reduce the need for animal testing in drug development and Pitt’s grant, which was awarded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, will help qualify microphysiological system testing for commercial use.
Still, many hurdles remain before the testing method becomes an industry standard, according to the study. Collecting patient organ cells from biopsies, for example, is difficult and the cells can’t be expanded in a culture.
The University of Pittsburgh’s Taylor is confident those obstacles can be overcome, including through the use of stem cells derived from patient skin or blood samples.
To show the effectiveness of microphysiological system testing, Taylor’s research will be focusing on a liver disease that affects between 25% and 30% of the world’s population and can lead to end-stage liver disease, but has no FDA-approved drug for treatment. Medications now in development will help only a small percentage of these patients, but which ones?
Taylor said studies at Pitt were already underway to test 25 to 30 drugs or combinations in the treatment of the disease, sometimes called fatty liver disease.
“We are already testing existing drugs that can impact fatty liver disease,” he said. “We will pursue clinical trials for the best combinations.”
