The ATHENA organ project combines relevant features of the human heart, liver, kidneys and lungs for testing the toxicity of new drugs and toxic chemicals. Picture credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory
The Athena project is being developed by several institutions, lead by Los Alamos National Laboratory and funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The idea is to develop “homo minutus”, a system small enough to fit on a desktop yet able to mimic the human heart-liver-kidneys-lungs’ reaction to new drugs and toxic chemicals. If it works as planned it could reduce the need for animal testing and could speed up the discovery of new medicines.
If you’re interested in more details, read this article. I’m happy just to wish them well!
bikehikebabe: I phoned Tom last night and she’s still in the hospital. She’ll be there until she can get around with a walker. So far it’s still too painful. Yuck!
March 29, 2014
That’s interesting and, like you, I wish them the best of luck.
Their choice of project names could have been more original. I did a search for videos and there was a wide variety of results for Athena Project in all sorts of endeavors.
I was sorry to hear about bikehikebabe’s injury. I hope she has a successful recovery.
Yes, I noticed all the Athena’s too. But there is a reason for it — in this context it stands for Advanced Tissue-engineered Human Ectypal Network Analyzer. That’s quite a mouthful!
I wish both the development teams and BHB all success and speedy recovery respectively.
Yes!
oh no.
but at least by her being there she’s no doubt getting therapy.
and if anything were to go wrong she’d be right there for help.
sometimes i think they send you home too soon. but i know she must be wanting to leave the hospital.
and this homo minutus news is the best of the best!
i hope it works. the thought of torturing animals for the sake of science has always been a necessary evil i guess. and maybe now… no more? i will hold only good thoughts about it. thank you monk for the good news!
bhb is home now but still tired and in a lot of pain.
Yes, good for the researchers!
Wow, that’s a really cool project. I hope that they manage it. It would save lots of experiments on animals and people.
I am pulling for bikehikebabe.
And it would mean they could study the tens of thousands of compounds being used regularly that have never been tested because of the cost. If they can get it to work it will be a real breakthrough.
That’s wonderful.
Sending love to bhp
oops bhb