This Technology Could Finally End Animal Testing

Forbes

Congress and the FDA are pushing pharmaceutical companies to replace animals with technology for drug research. That’s a long way off, but startups and industry stalwarts are working to make it happen.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2025/07/31/how-ai-and-mini-organs-could-replace-testing-drugs-on-animals/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Today on Forbes, how AI and mini-organs could replace testing drugs on animals.

00:07At Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, researchers have created something extraordinary.

00:13Tiny, beating lab-grown, quote, hearts.

00:16Visible only under a microscope, the diminutive innards are called organoids.

00:22They can be grown in a matter of days from a patient's own stem cells,

00:25and their doctors use them to screen for the best medicine for their condition,

00:29sparing months of trial and error.

00:32They're also core to the future of drug testing, and someday, perhaps the end of the lab rat.

00:38Animal testing has been mandated by law since 1937,

00:41when a new formulation of a common antibiotic had a poisonous new ingredient,

00:46and killed more than 100 people.

00:49Nearly a century later, drugs are still being pulled from shelves because they have toxic effects,

00:53even though animal testing showed they were safe.

00:56Now, politicians, scientists, and entrepreneurs are pushing for new, more accurate ways to test drugs

01:03before they get to human clinical trials, potentially saving lives and billions of dollars in the process.

01:09In 2022, a group of scientists ran an experiment with 27 known drug compounds that animal studies had shown to be safe.

01:18Some of them had turned out to have toxic side effects and had been pulled from the market after they'd killed people.

01:23The researchers tested the 27 compounds on a new technology called, quote,

01:28organ-on-a-chip.

01:30Similar to organoids, so-called organ chips have clusters of cells embedded in a diminutive electronic device

01:37that can simulate an organ's behavior.

01:39The researchers found that liver organs on a chip accurately predicted which compounds were dangerous,

01:45an advancement that might someday lead to significant cost savings in the extremely expensive drug development process.

01:52More accurate testing using organ chips could save the industry over $3 billion a year, the study's authors calculated.

01:59On top of safety, cost is another reason to move away from animal testing.

02:04Today, pharma companies often spend more than $2 billion to bring a single drug to market,

02:10with the industry spending nearly $300 billion a year on research and development.

02:15But despite these vast R&D expenditures, more than 90% of drug candidates fail.

02:21It's a wasteful process, contributing to the flabbergasting prices of drugs that do make it to market.

02:27Animal testing, a first step in the process for many drugs, is a key factor here.

02:33It simply isn't as accurate as it needs to be,

02:36leading researchers down a multitude of costly rabbit holes and dead ends.

02:40A common joke among them is that we're capable of curing nearly every disease, in mice.

02:47Ali Afshar, CEO of London-based Midos, which is developing a new automated way to grow cell cultures,

02:53replicating human cells in a petri dish, so you can then test drugs on them, said,

02:58quote,

02:58Clearly, we're not getting realistic information from animals,

03:02because everything that gets to the clinical trial stage has first gone through animal trials and succeeded, right?

03:09Conventionally, cells are often grown manually,

03:12which can lead to inconsistencies from one culture to another,

03:15making it harder to replicate experiments.

03:17Automating the process provides faster and more reliable data,

03:22while freeing up researchers' time to do more important work.

03:25Afshar said that Midos, which was founded in 2016 and has raised a total of nearly $29 million,

03:31is selling its cultures to pharmaceutical customers

03:34to test treatments for diseases where animal models don't match what happens in people.

03:40Organoids and cell cultures are a few of the ways the FDA has proposed eliminating animal testing,

03:45starting with a class of drugs called monoclonal antibodies,

03:49which mimic the immune system's natural antibodies

03:52and are used to treat everything from cancer to Crohn's disease to COVID.

03:57Testing these drugs is difficult because they don't often work in mice

04:00and must be trialed on larger, more closely related animals to humans,

04:04such as monkeys, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars each.

04:08But even then, animal tests often produce misleading results

04:12on how these drugs will work in humans.

04:14For full coverage, check out Alex Knapp's piece on Forbes.com.

04:21This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.

04:23Thanks for tuning in.

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