UK scientists will grow miniature organs from NHS patient cells to improve medicine testing and reduce the number of animals used in drug development.
The lab-grown tissues will be used to study how diseases differ between patients, helping researchers identify which treatments may work best according to the underlying cause of their condition.
The work marks a move away from traditionally using animals as models for human disease towards tests based directly on human tissue, which researchers believe could be more accurate and reliable.
Matthias Zilbauer, clinical professor of paediatric gastroenterology at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, said: “It’s going to have a major impact on the numbers of animals used and the way we develop new drugs in the future.
“We’re not saying there won’t be any animal use in the near or foreseeable future, because there are still certain issues that cannot be tested in these new models, but the reduction is very real.”
Researchers have been growing tiny clumps of human organs, known as organoids, for more than a decade.
Tests show that pieces smaller than a millimetre can mirror key features of full-sized organs and tissues, including how they are affected by disease and respond to drugs.
Using organoids grown from diseased human tissue, scientists can investigate whether new drug candidates reverse disease-related changes in all patients or only certain groups.
The approach could also help researchers identify ineffective drugs earlier in development.
Historically, more than 90 per cent of drugs that pass animal testing go on to fail in human trials, raising questions about how well animal tests predict results in people.
US and European medicines regulators now encourage other approaches where they are available.
“A lot of human diseases either do not occur in animals or occur in a different way because they’re not human,” Zilbauer said.
“We want tests and models that can tell us which treatments work, and in what patients, and a mouse cannot tell us that.”
The new work will be based at a research hub in Cambridge funded with £20m from the Medical Research Council.
Researchers there will work with other scientists to create a library of standardised and validated organoids that can be made available to academics and the pharmaceutical industry to support drug development.
The programme is part of a strategy drawn up by Keir Starmer’s government to accelerate the reduction of animals used in research.
The strategy uses so-called new approach methodologies, or Nams, including organoids, organ-on-a-chip systems and artificial intelligence to process data and model biological processes.
There were 2.54m animal testing procedures carried out in Britain last year, down 3.8 per cent on 2024.
More than 90 per cent involved mice, rats, fish and birds, while 1 per cent involved specially protected species such as cats, dogs, horses and monkeys.
Researchers plan to grow a range of organoids, from beating clumps of heart tissue to electrically active brain cells.
Zilbauer’s team will start with organoids for inflammatory bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.
Other researchers will focus on growing tumours to improve cancer treatments and brain organoids to better understand neurological conditions.
A further £2m has been awarded by Innovate UK to nine projects aimed at reducing the number of animals, including dogs and monkeys, used in safety testing.
One company, VivoSphere, is growing heart cells in tiny gel spheres for heart safety tests.
Traditional tests can involve between 50 and 100 animals, including guinea pigs, rabbits and dogs.
VivoSphere’s approach aims to detect toxicity earlier so potentially harmful drugs do not reach the animal testing stage.
Yuan Tian, chief technology officer at VivoSphere, said: “If something is going to fail, there’s a lower risk for the animals and also for the patients.”
Dr Juliet Dukes, of the charity Replacing Animals in Research, added: “One of the huge advantages of organoids, organs-on-a-chip and other in vitro microphysiological systems is that, unlike animal models, they have real potential to deliver the promise of truly personalised medicine for individual patients.
“It is all very exciting.”
