With over 450,000 deadly victims each year, malaria is perhaps the world’s most significant health problem. And even though medicines exist, they are not accessible or effective for everyone. A team of American researchers took matters into their own hands and developed a multi-organ-on-a-chip, taking a crucial step towards reliable, effective, and animal-free malaria drugs.

The power of combining

On this so-called lab-on-a-chip the functioning of the liver, the spleen and the cell walls of blood vessels is replicated. The three organs are connected to each other with tubes, allowing red blood cells to flow through the chip.

This is called a multi-organ-on-a-chip and ensures that the complex processes in the human body are more accurately replicated. As a result scientists can investigate, among other things, the routes that drugs take in our bodies and the effects these drugs do or do not have on our organs.

Promising discoveries

Researchers infected the chip with two types of malaria parasites: one that is resistant to a commonly used malaria drug and one that is not. The results are promising. The non-resistant parasites responded strongly to the drug, while the resistant parasites were hardly affected. Additionally, the researchers discovered that a higher dose of the drug led to more damaged red blood cells – which happens to be one of the known side effects of the medication.

Anne Burgers, science and innovation: “The model reacts the same way to malaria and the drugs as the actual organs in the human body do. So we can actually use it to investigate the effectiveness of malaria drugs. That’s a significant step towards animal-free malaria research.”

Better drug research for humans and animals

Successful use of the model will expedite the development of effective and reliable malaria drugs. This not only saves a tremendous amount of animal suffering but will also make a big difference for the hundreds of thousands of patients who suffer from malaria each year. Better for both humans and animals!

Source: sciencebusiness.technewslit.com