The Peta International Science Consortium and MatTek Corporation have awarded Professor Hyun Jung Kim with 3D reconstructed human tissue models for his winning research proposal.
Kim's work focuses on bioinspired organ mimicry, specifically human gut-on-a-chip that simulates the environment of a living human intestine and allows researchers to understand disease and test therapeutics without using animal models. Animal models are time, resource and labor intensive, and ethically problematic. Moreover, they do not accurately predict human physiology.
MatTek creates human cell-based tissues that are used to reduce animal testing.
In his proposal, Kim demonstrated that MatTek tissues can replace the use of animal models to predict human health outcomes in human intestinal disease. His model can offer a variety of experimental versatility and help researchers understand inflammation in the gut and test therapeutics.
Kim's was one of four winning proposals out of 45 submitted from more than a dozen countries.
