ATHENA, the Desktop Human "Body"
Abstract
Creating surrogate human organs, coupled with insights from highly sensitive mass spectrometry technologies, a new project is on the brink of revolutionizing the way we screen new drugs and toxic agents. ATHENA, the Advanced Tissue-engineered Human Ectypal Network Analyzer project team, is developing four human organ constructs - liver, heart, lung and kidney - that are based on a significantly miniaturized platform. Each organ component will be about the size of a smartphone screen, and the whole ATHENA "body" of interconnected organs would fit neatly on a desk. "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, the lead laboratory on the five-year, $19 million multi-institutional effort. The project is supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). Some 40 percent of pharmaceuticals fail their clinical trials, Iyer noted, and there are thousands of chemicals whose effects on humans are simply unknown. Providing a realistic, cost-effective and rapid screening system such as ATHENA with high-throughput capabilities could provide major benefits tomore »
- Authors:
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1166958
- Resource Type:
- Multimedia
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES; ATHENA; HUMAN ORGANS; TESTING; DRUG SCREENING; ANALYSIS; TOXIC AGENTS
Citation Formats
Iyer, Rashi, and Harris, Jennifer. ATHENA, the Desktop Human "Body". United States: N. p., 2014.
Web.
Iyer, Rashi, & Harris, Jennifer. ATHENA, the Desktop Human "Body". United States.
Iyer, Rashi, and Harris, Jennifer. Mon .
"ATHENA, the Desktop Human "Body"". United States. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1166958.
@article{osti_1166958,
title = {ATHENA, the Desktop Human "Body"},
author = {Iyer, Rashi and Harris, Jennifer},
abstractNote = {Creating surrogate human organs, coupled with insights from highly sensitive mass spectrometry technologies, a new project is on the brink of revolutionizing the way we screen new drugs and toxic agents. ATHENA, the Advanced Tissue-engineered Human Ectypal Network Analyzer project team, is developing four human organ constructs - liver, heart, lung and kidney - that are based on a significantly miniaturized platform. Each organ component will be about the size of a smartphone screen, and the whole ATHENA "body" of interconnected organs would fit neatly on a desk. "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, the lead laboratory on the five-year, $19 million multi-institutional effort. The project is supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). Some 40 percent of pharmaceuticals fail their clinical trials, Iyer noted, and there are thousands of chemicals whose effects on humans are simply unknown. Providing a realistic, cost-effective and rapid screening system such as ATHENA with high-throughput capabilities could provide major benefits to the medical field, screening more accurately and offering a greater chance of clinical trial success.},
doi = {},
journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Sep 29 00:00:00 EDT 2014},
month = {Mon Sep 29 00:00:00 EDT 2014}
}