An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Miniature human organs and other tissues are to be grown from NHS patients' cells in a drive to improve medicine testing and reduce the number of animals used in drug development. Scientists will use the clumps of tissue to learn how diseases vary between patients, helping them identify which treatments are best for different people based on the particular pathology underlying their condition. The move marks a shift away from the traditional use of animals as models for human disease, towards what researchers believe will be more accurate and reliable tests based directly on human tissues. Researchers have been growing tiny clumps of human organs, known as organoids, for more than a decade. Tests show that pieces smaller than a millimeter can mirror key features of full-scale organs and tissues, including how they falter with disease and respond to drugs. Armed with organoids grown from diseased human tissues, scientists can investigate whether new drug candidates reverse pathological changes in all or a subset of patients, and quickly identify ineffective drugs early in the process. Historically, more than 90% of drugs that clear animal testing go on to fail in human trials, raising questions about the value of the tests. US and European medicines regulators now encourage other approaches if available. "It's going to have a major impact on the numbers of animals used and the way we develop new drugs in the future," said Matthias Zilbauer, a clinical professor of paediatric gastroenterology at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. "We're not saying there won't be any animal use in the near or foreseeable future, because there are still certain issues that cannot be tested in these new models, but the reduction is very real." "A lot of human diseases either do not occur in animals or occur in a different way because they're not human," added Zilbauer. "We want tests and models that can tell us which treatments work, and in what patients, and a mouse cannot tell us that."

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Longtime Slashdot reader sbinning shares a press release: The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced the launch of a new clinical trial to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of psilocybin to treat major depression in Veterans, including those with concurrent PTSD. The new trial comes after a recent executive order on "Accelerating Medical Treatments for Serious Mental Illness," which aims to increase clinical trial participation and accelerate innovative research models and drug approvals for psychedelic drugs. [...] The randomized, controlled trial will enroll Veterans diagnosed with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder, with or without concurrent PTSD, and will compare outcomes between two psilocybin dosage levels. The study will also assess participants' levels of depression before and after treatment, tolerability of side effects, and overall patient-reported depression. [...] In addition to this trial, VA is involved in 20 active clinical trials focused on psychedelic therapies for mental health conditions. All VA research -- including research into psychedelics -- is conducted under strict safety protocols and in full compliance with federal guidelines.

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