Lab rats replaced with microchips in new UK plan to phase out animal testing

Remember the film where a growling chimpanzee sinks its teeth into one of the activists trying to save it, marking them out as patient zero in a zombie epidemic?

28 Days Later is just one of many sci-fi narratives using animal testing as a plot point, but the UK government hopes these stories will soon be even more far-fetched than before.

Today, they committed to phasing out animal testing faster, saying effective alternatives are now available, like human tissue grown on a microchip, or even 3D bioprinted tissues replicating things like skin or liver.

Professor Martin Knight, who leads a team looking into ‘organs on chips’ at Queen Mary University of London, told Metro this involves growing ‘living cells within a little plastic device. You provide all of the the stimuli that makes them replicate their behaviour in the body, and then you can use that to test new drugs to to do scientific research without having to use an animal.’

Showing us the systems ranging from a SIM-card sized bit of plastic, to a more complicated honeycomb-like structure which can pump fluid around, he said thousands of different cells can be grown there, in different types such as those which make up a real human organ.

They don’t have to just sit still either, with the potential to move them in ways similar to the heart beating or muscles contracting, to recreate the real human organ as closely as possible.

‘Then we can add in our drugs or our disease stimuli, and really begin to see how that that organ would behave in response,’ he said.

Last year, there were over 2.5 million scientific procedures on living animals in the UK, and technology of the type Prof Knight is working on could mean some lab rats would be free to retire.

But he said it’s not only an ethical question of reducing animal suffering, but also a step forwards in how effective tests are.

This is because not only would human cells potentially give us a better idea of how drugs and disease would effect a human, but these organs on chips could be tailored to an individual’s specific cells.

At the moment, treatment for some illnesses such as cancer can involve trying out various drugs in succession to see which one works.

But Prof Knight said: ‘This is something you couldn’t even dream of doing in an animal, but you can use a particular patient’s cells to do what’s called precision medicine, where you can test whether that particular patient is going to respond to a particular drug.’

Research into this is already happening to see how people with arthritis would respond to different steroid treatments.

When will animal testing be phased out?

An end to animal testing entirely is hard to say, as we still don’t have the technology required to replace it for everything, but the government has set up some key dates:

End of 2026: The government has commited to end regulatory testing on animals to assess if new treatments could cause skin and eye irritation and skin sensitisation.

2027: Researchers should end tests of the strength of botox on mice. They should only use DNA-based lab methods to detect viruses or bacteria that might accidentally contaminate medicines (adventitious agent testing).

2030: Tests on dogs and non-human primates should be reduced. These are pharmacokinetic studies, which track how a drug moves through the body over time.

Professor Julie Gough, of the University of Manchester, who co-authored a paper in Nature called ‘Alternatives to animal testing are the future’, told Metro she thinks it will take ‘quite a long time’ to get to near complete replacement of animals in testing, but it would be possible, though it could ‘take a few decades, realistically’.

Her work includes also trying to phase out the use of animal products such as antibodies and serum in testing, which she says will make research both more accurate and more ethical.

She welcomed the UK’s stance, which follows the US Food and Drug Administration announcing plans to phase out their requirement for animal testing in the development of some therapies and drugs.

‘It’s definitely a day to celebrate,’ she said, putting the UK in a good position to lead in alternative research techniques.

Can we really phase out animal testing?

Other scientists have been critical of what they consider a premature move to sideline animal testing.

John Martin, professor of cardiovascular medicine at University College London, said: ‘There will always be a need for animal experimentation in the advance of medical science for the good of patients.

‘For example heart transplant is now a success. However no patient would have agreed to have the first heart transplant unless it had been shown to be safe in animals first.’

Prof Robin Lovell-Badge of the Francis Crick Institute also warned he thinks the government strategy is ‘pushing this agenda too hard’, and risked demotivating animal researchers.

‘Any (premature) loss of these skilled and conscientious people will severely affect the UK’s ability to conduct competitive/world-leading biomedical research,’ he said.

‘We are definitely not ready to abandon research with animals, and for some disciplines we may never get to this.’

Areas he sees are more challenging include ‘complex areas of biology, such as the brain and behaviour, reproductive and endocrine systems, the immune system, tumour biology, etc, or where there is a need to account for ageing, altered physiologies, environmental effects, etc.’

He stressed that those involved in animal testing already subscribe to the three Rs (Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement) which guides ethical experiments, and support using non-animal methods where possible.

‘Be realistic about where the technology is at the moment’

Professor Knight, who is Co-Director of the Centre for Predictive in vitro Models at Queen Mary, said artificial intelligence is also going to be key in moving away from animal testing.

It is ’embedded in the government strategy’, and can be helpful in interpreting vast amounts of data, from previous animal experiments and from new alternative methods.

Prof Knight, who also sits on the Home Office Animals in Science Committee, said: ‘Going forward, I expect that AI will also start to be used to predict biological behaviour, as a completely alternative method to having to run an animal experiment.’

But he cautioned: ‘If the government was to ban all animal experiments tomorrow, this would be a huge backward step in terms of the the science that’s being conducted.

‘But what is important is the development of the technology, the vision from the government of phasing out animal usage and replacing that with better alternative techniques.’

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

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