New Chip Could Cause Lab Rats To Be Laid-off
Hard Times Coming For Lab Rat Labor Market!
A new product being developed by a team at the University of California, Berkeley has the potential to replace our furry friends from their role as… lab rats. If you’re beginning to imagine Terminator-style cyborg rats with metallic skin and glowing eyes, better say “hasta la vista baby” to that image. The product being developed looks more like a tiny glass sandwich — no whiskers, no tails, and definitely no shotgun.
Professors Jonathan Dordick and Douglas Clark, both chemical engineering professors from the University of California, Berkeley are developing what they hope would replace lab rats in the future. The team plans to market the chip through their company, Solidus Biosciences, as early as next year.
The product is essentially two small rectangular glass slides sandwiched together. Each one looks like a standard microscope slide and contains hundreds of tiny white dots. The dots are actually a combination of human cell cultures and enzymes, designed to react much like human cells to chemicals, particularly to toxins. The first glass slide is called the MetaChip, with the dots containing human liver enzymes. The second slide is the DataChip, which has a matching array of dots and could contain live human bladder, liver, kidney, heart, skin, or lung cell cultures, depending on the test. The way it basically works is if a toxin was present in the substance being tested, the cells would stop growing or die.
Tests such as this one are called “in vitro”, which literally means “in glass”. This method of testing is considered more promising compared to other animal alternatives such as computer simulations and skin substitutes. In vitro tests are generally more efficient, faster, and easier to manipulate. If this approach proves to be a success, it would mean the end of animal testing. Modern medicine owes its success not only to a multitude of rats, but also mice, rabbits, dogs, monkeys, and even pigs.
Considering restrictions on the use of animals for cosmetic and pharmaceutical product testing, such as those to be enforced soon by the EU, and also a growing public concern on the issue, this product would be a welcome solution. The technology obviously still has its limitations while in this early development stage. One example is in assessing if substances could be a cancer risk.
About $3 million dollars in federal money and grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have been given to Solidus for their research. Dordick also notes that a pharmaceutical company and a cosmetic company are helping them test the product.
Contributor: Raymond Jamin, TigerDirect Correspondent
Source: CNN
Related Links: Lab Rat Robots @ TigerDirect.com
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