Iams association for biomedical research in the EU without the use of animals

An industrial alliance, the first in the EU, to accelerate the adoption of new research methodologies designed to progressively reduce the testing of drugs on animals. The pact was made by nine European companies (including two Italian ones) operating in the sector of those technologies that allow the functioning of human tissues and organs to be recreated in the laboratory.

Iams (Industry alliance for microphysiological systems), this is the name of the newly founded association, brings together entities operating both in the field of organoids (i.e. elementary units of groups of human cells, which faithfully reproduce the behaviour of a given organ, from which they have been taken) and in that of organ on chips (i.e. devices that recreate, in the laboratory, interconnected human organs and tissues, which behave as in the real body and allow complex biological responses to be observed and predicted).

The Genoese React4life, a founding partner of the new group (the other Italian company is Biomimx), is part of this second group, as well as a small company that operates globally, from California to Japan, even with big pharma, thanks to a patent for an organ-on-a-chip, called Mivo (Multi in vitro organ). The former startup was founded, in 2017, by CNR researchers Maurizio Aiello and Silvia Scaglione. And it is Aiello himself who explains what the purpose of Iams is. 'The alliance,' he emphasises, 'stems from a strategic choice, shared between leading European players. The United States, historically, were the first to invest in the development of these technologies, and now is the right time for Europe to organise a collective response'.

The common goal, he continues, 'is to get these systems pushed more, exactly as happens in America, because pharmaceutical companies tend to think more about their business than about experimentation, so they say: if we have to do tests, just continue to do them with animals, as has always been done. Our association therefore intends to develop lobbying activities with regulatory bodies, such as the European Commission and Parliament, as well as the Ema (European medicine agency) and the Italian Aifa'.

After all, says Aiello, 'the Commission's policy makers are pushing very hard for alternative methods to the use of animals; and the Ema has just created an Innovation task force, which serves precisely to activate dialogues with manufacturers, like us, who are doing alternative things. For our part, then, we are very open to other parties joining Iams as founding members. And we are also thinking of pharmaceutical companies, which have an enormous treasure trove of data on animal experiments that they could share with us. This would allow us to compare them with the results obtained with organoids and organ on chip and accelerate an ever wider use of these technologies'.