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Monday 20 July 2015

Project ATHENA: a surrogate human organ system

Los Alamos National Laboratory
via Sott.net

Surrogate human organs could revolutionize the way biologists and medical personnel screen new drugs or toxic agents. The development of miniature surrogate human organs, coupled with highly sensitive mass spectrometry technologies, could one day revolutionize the way new drugs and toxic agents are studied.

"By developing this 'homo minutus,' we are stepping beyond the need for animal or Petri dish testing: There are huge benefits in developing drug and toxicity analysis systems that can mimic the response of actual human organs," said Rashi Iyer, a senior scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

ATHENA, the Advanced Tissue-engineered Human Ectypal Network Analyzer project team, is nearing the full integration of four human organ constructs — liver, heart, lung and kidney — each organ component is about the size of a smartphone screen, and the whole ATHENA "body" of interconnected organs will fit neatly on a desk.

ATHENA project as it begins to integrate the various organ systems into a single system:  



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