Release date: 2013-07-05
Currently, at the Merck Boston lab, researchers are looking for new therapeutic asthma drugs using microchips that mimic human lung disease. Don Nicholson, head of respiratory medicine research at Merck, said: "The hope that 'pulmonary chips' can help scientists better understand the biological characteristics of asthma and identify promising potential drugs." If this With ideas in place, drug manufacturers will have a powerful new drug development tool and avoid wasting millions of dollars in research and development costs. The project was also funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Will increase the chances of discovering new drugs The "pulmonary chip" will not replicate all the functions of the lungs, but may duplicate many important functions. The chip consists of a memory stick-sized transparent silicone rubber and has a hollow passage through the air and liquid. These channels are separated by a flexible membrane that simulates the lungs and blood vessels of the human body on both sides of the channel. The cells of the channel can open and contract, simulating the body's breathing, like a living lung. The air in the channel flows through the membrane's lung cells on one side of the membrane, while the "blood" flows on the other side of the simulated human vascular cells.
Researchers at Harvard University's Wyss Bioengineering Institute unveiled the mystery of the "pulmonary chip" in 2010. In the "pulmonary chip", lung cells are infected with bacteria, and then immune cells are injected to attack the bacteria. Researchers point out that this scenario is like happening in real human organs. Similarly, the researchers were also troubled by the “pulmonary chip†simulating some pathological conditions, such as pulmonary edema or blockage of the lungs that made breathing difficult. GlaxoSmithKline is working with the Institute to test a potential drug on a "pulmonary chip" that mimics human lung disease, and found that the drug's effect on the chip appears to be in animal models of dog and mouse pulmonary edema.
This "organ chip" technology will increase the chances of pharmaceutical companies discovering new drugs. According to the study, only one drug that is approved by the regulatory authorities for use in patients can be found in the laboratory's 10,000 compounds, a process that typically takes more than a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment.
"AstraZeneca's Neuroscience Center is also using the 'liver chip' developed by Hurel to explore the metabolic rate of drug molecules. The chip helps to figure out how many doses of drugs will have pharmacological effects on patients. Avoid unnecessary side effects," said Doug Burdette, head of AstraZeneca's research project.
The road to replacing animals is still very long. Currently, this technology is progressing smoothly. Regulators are not yet ready to abandon the animal testing required for new drug development, nor do they accept other methods to determine whether the drug is safe and effective before being tested in humans. Although scientists are developing a variety of chips to mimic the functions of the kidneys, liver and other organs, "this approach is a potential replacement for the current methods of assessing the safety and efficacy of drugs, but there are still many Work needs to be done," said Douglas Throckmorton, deputy director of the FDA's drug regulatory sciences division.
Animal models have limitations in replacing human patients' diseases. For example, animal models do not faithfully mimic human asthma; human diseases have their own unique conditions, animal models cannot capture air contraction and all other characteristics of the disease, etc., Merck Dr. Nicholson said, "We have found a large number of drugs that can control asthmatic animals, but most of these drugs have failed in human trials."
Source: Pharmaceutical Economics
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