May 2024- On May 21st Dr Lorna Ewart, from the Boston USA based organ-on-a-chip company Emulate, received the prestigious Lush Science Prize on stage in London.
Animal tests often fail to spot chemicals that go on to be toxic to humans. Indeed 90% of drugs passing animal tests now fail to make it to market. Because of this there is now a booming industry of companies growing human cells on small devices in a way that mimics organs of the body. However, regulators around the world still require many animal tests because they claim that there is insufficient evidence to show that the new devices perform better.
Emulate won the award for publishing a breakthrough study in December 2022 which conclusively proved the superiority of its liver chips. The largest organ-on-a-chip study ever published used more than 800 chips to test 27 chemicals. Some of these chemicals had previously passed animal tests and gone on to cause more than 240 deaths due to liver injury.
Importantly, Emulate’s study also modelled the economic impact that the Liver-Chip could have if widely adopted. Its results suggested an industry-wide $3 billion increase in productivity. The study has now been read more than 31,000 times, cited by 43 additional publications. Referenced in 174 news stories, and ranked among the top 1% of similarly aged papers from Nature Communications Medicine.
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‘‘Our judges were blown away by the size and scale of Emulate’s study. They felt it set a new benchmark for academics and businesses everywhere who are trying to persuade people of the superiority of their new non-animal models. There is timidity and inertia among some chemical safety regulators, and it appears it will require studies of this kind to bring about the change that we want for the better health of humans and animals everywhere.’’ Said Rob Harrison, Lush Prize Director
The Lush Prize awards evening also saw prizes worth a total of £250,000 handed out to other campaigners, scientists and young researchers from around the world who are helping to bring about an animal-test free future. A full list of winners appears on the Lush Prize website.
