BéruBé Kelly, Gibson Claire, Job Claire, Prytherch Zoë
School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Museum Avenue, Cardiff, Wales, UK.
Cell Tissue Bank. 2011 Feb;12(1):11-3. doi: 10.1007/s10561-010-9204-6. Epub 2010 Sep 8.
In the field of human tissue-engineering, there has been a strong focus on the clinical aspects of the technology, i.e. repair, replace and enhance a given tissue/organ. However, much wider applications for tissue engineering (TE) exist outside of the clinic that are often not recognised, and include engineering more relevant models than animals in basic research and safety testing. Traditionally, research is initially conducted on animals or cell lines, both of which have their limitations. With regard to cell lines, they are usually transformed to enable indefinite proliferation. These immortalised cell lines provide the researcher with an almost limitless source of material. However, the pertinence of the data produced is now under scrutiny, with the suggestion that some historical cell lines may not be the cell type originally reported. By engineering normal, biomimetic (i.e. life-mimicking), human tissues with defined physiology (i.e. human tissue equivalents), the complex 3-dimensional (3-D) tissue/organ physiology is captured in vitro, providing the opportunity to directly replace the use of animals in research/testing with more relevant systems. Therefore, it is imperative that testing strategies using organotypic models are developed that can address the limitations of current animal and cellular models and thus improve drug development, enabling faster delivery of drugs which are safer, more effective and have fewer side effects in humans.
在人体组织工程领域，人们一直高度关注该技术的临床应用，即修复、替换和增强特定的组织/器官。然而，组织工程（TE）在临床之外还有许多更广泛的应用，而这些应用往往未得到认可，包括在基础研究和安全性测试中构建比动物模型更具相关性的模型。传统上，研究最初是在动物或细胞系上进行的，这两者都有其局限性。就细胞系而言，它们通常经过转化以实现无限增殖。这些永生化细胞系为研究人员提供了几乎无限的材料来源。然而，目前所产生数据的相关性正受到审视，有人认为一些历史悠久的细胞系可能并非最初报道的细胞类型。通过构建具有特定生理学特征的正常、仿生（即模拟生命）的人体组织（即人体组织等效物），体外可捕捉到复杂的三维（3-D）组织/器官生理学特征，从而有机会用更具相关性的系统直接取代研究/测试中对动物的使用。因此，迫切需要开发使用类器官模型的测试策略，以解决当前动物和细胞模型的局限性，进而改善药物研发，使更安全、更有效且副作用更少的药物能更快地应用于人类。
