research

Human tissue banks

In 1885 scientists discovered that cells could be kept alive in cell cultures outside the body: from that moment onwards, all lab techniques aimed at growing, developing and maintaining cells, tissues and human or animal organs in vitro have enormously evolved. It is currently possible to use human tissues to study new diseases, to know how the body works, to create and test new drugs.

Lots of biomedical research is carried out by using tissues, but as counterintuitive as it may seem, the cells, organs and tissues are mainly of animal origin. Availability of human organs and tissues is an acknowledged problem: available tissues are not enough to meet industry and public research centres needs.

Scientists are reluctant to plan middle/long term research projects without the guarantee that tissues will be available at the suitable time. This problem does not exist since animals are kept in lab and killed when necessary.

Looking the data about animal use (above all the good quality data in Switzerland and in England) it really seems that about 10-20% of the total number of animals used are killed for the exclusive purpose of taking their tissues.

It is therefore desirable to replace the use of animals, not only on ethical grounds, but also on scientific grounds. Whenever possible, in vitro methods should be used instead of in vivo methods, and for many purposes, in vitro systems employing human tissue would be the most scientifically relevant. The areas of research that would benefit from the use of human tissue are both diverse and extensive, but fundamental improvements would include more-relevant investigations of human disease, subsequent development of therapies, and improved safety testing of agents to which humans are exposed.

However, in Europe, the demand for human tissue by scientists in both industry and academia is currently greater than the supply.

Human material can be obtained as:

surgery tissue surplus (currently disposed as sanitary waste)
tissue from donor (when not suitable for transplantation)
post-mortem tissue (from Forensic Medicine)

The amount of human tissue available for research is constrained by many legal, ethical, cultural and practical considerations; I CARE is now working to provide effective projects whereby researchers can be supplied with human tissues in an ethical and transparent manner.

After all, it is easy to support the basic concept: "It is not waste anymore but a resource! Do not throw it away... Use it to save human and animal lives!".

The ATRA Project

The Human tissue banks project of ATRA is to create a progressive and scientific alternative to the use of animals in biomedical research through the establishment of one or more Human Tissue Banks in Switzerland that will treat, preserve and supply human cells, tissues and organs.

The project is described in the paper: Human Research Tissue Banks: The ATRA Project for Establishing a Human Research Tissue Bank in Switzerland, ATLA 33, 29-36, 2005 and in the poster presented at the "5th World Congress on Alternatives & Animal Use in the Life Sciences" Establishment of human tissue banks for bio-medical research in Switzerland.

Resources

Animal Aid Humane Research campaign
UK - Human Tissue Bank: the unique UK based tissue bank for research
ECVAM Report n. 32 (1998): The Availability of Human Tissue for Biomedical Research
ECVAM report n. 44 (2000): The Establishment of Human Research Tissue Banking in the UK and Several Western European Countries
Pharmagene: it is a human tissue-based business serving the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. It is dedicated to improving the efficiency of the drug discovery and development process.