Mini organ drug testing

What's better than testing for complications and benefits of a new drug or medical procedure on humans? Nothing really. But since that is illegal in the USA scientist have found a way to produce lab miniature organs. 

University of California, Santa Barbara, has been working on producing a miniature brain that can then be used to study the effects of drugs. Using an army of stem cells, progenitor cells, vesicular cells, and microglila on copious amounts of the right media they grew these mini brains. The brains could then be studied for altered gene expressions caused by drugs using an algorithm. 

As for the mechanics for this miniature organ growth. They plated the cells on a media called Hydrogel which contains all the polypeptides needed for protein production and then they allowed the cells to do what they will. Amazingly, we have not developed a better way to produce tissue other than to let tissues make themselves. 

This will have a huge impact on drug studies.  Even though these lab grown organs are lacking the effect of the physio-chemical environment of the human body, the results will still be more closely related to what will actually happen. Using mice and other model organisms can only give us results that only give us an idea of what could possibly happen in a human. We never know what will actually happen until the clinic trials begin. These mini organoids will allow us to study the drug affects in human tissues. Thus, making clinical trials much safer as we know if something is going harm human tissues or not. 

Here is a link to the article: http://www.futurity.org/stem-cells-drug-testing-1010722-2/