Drug discovery is a cruel business. A hundred thousand people die every year because of adverse drug side effects. Millions die too young because drugs just aren’t good enough.
The problem is that scientists invent medicines to treat people, but they have to use animal or tumor cells to do it. Heart cells, brain cells and liver cells all die when you try to keep them in a petri dish. So over decades researchers have come up with jury-rigged tests. They use preserved kidney cells extracted from a human fetus 30 years ago to see if an experimental drug will disrupt the rhythm of the heart. They use cells from a rat’s digestive tract with human receptors stuck in. They force huge doses of every potential medicine down the throats of rodents.
“The system is failing,” says Gabriela Cezar, who left Pfizer to study stem cells at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.