Relying less on animal testing for new drugs and more on lab-made “organoids” designed to mimic the functions of human organs sounds like the stuff of science fiction but could lead to medical advances.

Pradipta Ghosh, an Indian-born American physician-scientist, biochemist, and cell biologist with expertise in clinical medicine and basic research, will be speaking on the technological advancements during her talk at the upcoming TEDx conference on Saturday.

In her talk, Tiny Tools, Tremendous Impact, she will challenge the reliance on traditional animal models such as mice and rats — systems she says fail to bridge the gap between laboratory research and clinical success.

She will speak on embracing a new era in which organoids, smaller and more simplified versions of human organs that are produced in a lab to function as patient “avatars”, could offer more ethical, efficient and accurate alternatives to animal testing in clinical trials.

Dr Ghosh is the founding director of the Humanoid Centre of Organoid Research, based at the University of California in San Diego.

She told The Royal Gazette: “If I told you today there is a magical pill that will make you 20 years younger and 40 years wiser with the most desirable body of a young athletic person, and I promise you it will work, will you take it?

“I think you will say ‘no’, you will want proof that it is working and is safe. You will want me to test it.

“You will say, ‘absolutely not, you can test it on an avatars, if that one works then I will take it’.

“James Cameron [the director of Avatar] said it is harder to write science fiction these days as we are now living in that era.

“We have something close, it’s humanlike but not human.”

Dr Ghosh explained that we rely on a lengthy drug discovery process involving approximately $2.5 billion for every drug that fails. She said the process can take a decade to 15 years per drug, with the vast majority of them failing.

“Why do they fail? They fail because we tend to test them on animals — mice, rats and chimps, which have all these illusions of similarities, flawed illusions of us matching with them.

"After all that, we have cured mice of every disease known to man, but have almost nothing for what we get sick and die from.

“The idea that we as scientists cannot reproduce something that beautifully cured the mouse to work in humans is because we are unique, patients are diverse — anything that we discover in caged mice falls apart when it goes to the clinic.

“What can we do better? There was a stunning admission by the former director of the National Institutes of Health, Elias Zerhouni, in 2013. He said that we have all drunk the Kool-Aid for too long, himself included, and it was time to move on to human models for testing drugs for human disease.

“This was against the backdrop of increased activism by the likes of Peta [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] which understandably points out that cruelty to animals in medical research was futile because it wasn’t resulting in safe and effective drugs.

“The father of organoid technology, Hans Clevers, in 2009 introduced the ability to take stem cells from any organ and make it into a mini organ in a dish. He showed it with a human gut.

“Now numerous organs can be grown using the technology. That started the era of hope, largely driven by how amazing we can do experiments in 3D, humanlike tissue structures that can continue to be cultured.”

Dr Ghosh explained that the race began across groups from big pharmaceutical and biotech companies to academics, to bring the technology into clinical trials.

Her talk will address some of the challenges that arose, including the need for “guardrails” to ensure standardised, engineering-driven processes with consistency across studies.

She added: “Because engineering relies upon mathematical equations, I believe that results obtained through these approaches will be the same today as they will be tomorrow or in years to come, just like maths.

“We are at that point where we have gathered enough traction. The world has noted what we have been doing. We have named the programme BioDesign (Biology-driven Innovation for Drug Efficacy, Safety and Integrated Next-gen).”

Dr Ghosh said that BioDesign could address factors responsible for “about 90 per cent of setbacks in drug discovery”.

Her talk will address techniques to harness "avatars" responsibly and drive the future of personalised therapies.

The TEDx conference will be held from 1pm to 5.30pm this Saturday at the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club.

Tickets are available through www.ptix.bm. For more information, visit www.tedxbermuda.com.