STAT+: As the FDA and NIH eschew animal testing, startup raises $40 million for lab-grown organs

The world looked a little different when bioengineer Dan Huh first began exploring whether it was possible to replace mouse testing with small-scale replicas of human tissues. 

The iPhone was just hitting store shelves. The researchers who had discovered gene silencing through RNA interference had recently received a Nobel Prize. And a blonde, curly haired young woman by the name of Taylor Swift had just released her first album. 

Nearly 20 years later, Huh’s work has advanced far beyond his initial notions. Huh and collaborator Andrei Georgescu have created a system that incorporates robotics and artificial intelligence in the hopes of drastically improving preclinical drug development. 

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