Alternatives 1: Cell Culture

Over the next few days, I'm going to discuss a few alternatives to animal research, and in that context, the necessity of an animal model in addition to the alternatives.

One question that I've seen lot concerns cell culture. Those not familiar with life sciences research ask why we still need to use animals when we can culture human cells. I'll start by explaining what exactly cell culture, also known as tissue culture is.

Cell culture is essentially growing cells isolated from a clinical (human) or an animal sample, on a petri dish. The dish has a special coating that allows the cells to attach, and there they form a layer similar to that found in an organ, such as the linings of the intestines. However, cells don't naturally grow on plastic. In order to grow at all, the cells have to be stimulated with growth factors, in far excess to that found in the human body, or in some cases, factors that are not in the human body at all in normal conditions. Secondly, even with growth factors, normally dividing cells from the human body do not grow, at least not at an appreciable rate and over long periods of time. Cells have to be immortalized, either by an artificial procedure in the lab, or by an innate capability, usually found in cancer cells. You can see that these cells are not normal, and that there are many conditions unlike that of the body, such as growing on a piece of plastic.

Also, in the body, cells talk to one another. More than one kind of cell is found in the body; often times, there are cell types that we aren't even aware of - all of the cells in a tissue culture arise from one single cell and are identical. The different cells send one another signals that change how the recipient cells behave. These changes can mean that these cells behave very differently towards a new therapeutic than they would in tissue culture. These and other variables cause for results found in tissue culture to sometimes differ greatly from those in whole organism systems.

So in conclusion, we do every study possible in a tissue culture model and any preliminary data is obtained this way. However, in order to know whether our developments are actually relevant in medical treatment, we have to test them in a whole organism first. I've heard animal rights activists say that they will subject themselves to the testing, or that inmates, braindead people or any other number of human alternatives are options; in my opinion this is just a smoke screen and a gimmick to get attention. Very, very few people would voluntarily subject themselves to experimentation, and if they did, there would certainly be some legal consequences for us! The same would apply if we took treatments directly to the clinic and tried them on unwitting patients.