The UK Medical Research Council has awarded £20 million to a Cambridge research centre to create a library of human organoids — miniature, simplified versions of organs grown from patient cells.
The programme will use cells donated by NHS patients to produce tissue models for drug testing, beginning with intestinal diseases and later expanding to cancer tumours, brain tissue and beating heart cells.
Organoids are three-dimensional cell structures that mimic key functions of real organs, offering a closer approximation of human biology than traditional animal models.
Historically, more than 90% of drugs that succeed in animal trials fail during human clinical trials, a gap the new library is intended to help close.
The initiative is part of a broader government strategy to phase out animal testing in favour of human-relevant methods.
Researchers and pharmaceutical companies will be able to access the organoid library to screen potential treatments earlier and more accurately.
The first phase focuses on gastrointestinal conditions, with oncology, neurology and cardiology models planned for subsequent stages.
Funding covers the infrastructure needed to standardise production, quality control and distribution of the organoids across the research community.
В Великобритании начнут выращивать человеческие мини-органы из клеток пациентов
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