In the realm of in vitro research, specialized human biologicals such as cancer and disease-state biologicals, depleted samples, and deficient samples play an important role in disease modeling studies, drug discovery research, toxicity testing, and metabolism studies around the world. In this blog post we’ll cover some of the different types of specialized human products that are commonly used in in vitro research applications and discuss how they’re used and what makes them so important.
Specialized human biologicals are biological samples used in research that do not come from a normal donor. Specialized human products might come in the form of blood products, bio fluids, tissue samples, or lysates, and typically are sourced from patients that are suffering from long-term or chronic illnesses or diseases. Alternatively, they may be samples taken from a normal patient that are then processed in a way to make the sample deficient or depleted in a particular component. Specialized human products like these are a cornerstone in understanding the mechanisms of various illnesses and diseases.
Bridging the Gap
In current drug development and disease modeling research, there exists a gap between what we can learn from animal research models and how drugs and diseases interact with the human body. Researchers aim to bridge this gap by creating bioengineered human disease models which are designed to mimic various clinical scenarios, such as various disease states or treatment cases (Loewa, Feng, Hedtrich, 2023).
When studying disease mechanisms, animal models often fail to paint the full picture of what happens in the body as animal models often poorly resemble exact human conditions, thus limiting their predictive value of how the findings may translate to a human study. Further, many lab animals used in drug and disease models are inbred and are kept in strictly monitored environments, and thus research done on them does not account for genetic and environmental differences experienced by humans. Further, because animal models do not exactly mimic human conditions, many drugs studied in hopes of treating diseases suffer from being ineffective or even harmful once tested in humans.
To overcome the shortcomings of animal models in research, focusing on creating in vitro human models has become more important than ever. Researchers are focusing on things like 2D cell cultures, bioengineered human tissue models, and other models to create environments that better mimic various human disease states.
2D Cell Cultures
One important type of model a researcher may use in drug and disease studies is 2D Cell Culture. In these models, researchers take either donor cells from a patient or engineer specific cell lines to culture in a dish. From there, they can study disease mechanisms or test drugs and other therapeutic treatments for efficacy.
A major obstacle that presents itself in 2D Cell Cultures is the limitations of 2D cultures. Certain things, such as skin, can’t be mimicked in 2D. Further, some gene and protein expressions differ greatly in 2D and 3D models. Finally, certain cellular functions and transporters are simply better mimicked in a 3D model than in 2D (Loewa et al. 2023).
Bioengineered Tissue Models
Another type of research model utilizing specialized human products is bioengineered tissue models. In these models, cells are taken from a donor and placed into hydrogel or polymer-based scaffolds. With these models, researchers can cultivate cells in a submerged matrix, better mimicking an in vivo environment. Because these models can better recreate 3D tissue environments, they’re often used for creating models to study the skin, lungs, gut, and other multi-layered or stratified tissues. On the downside, these models have limited cell diversity and a short lifespan as they cannot be propagated or cryopreserved (Loewa et al. 2023).
Drug Development and Disease Mechanisms
Human models are important for every step of drug development research. They’re utilized everywhere from screening for target molecules, to efficacy and safety testing, and later implementation and toxicity testing in preclinical and clinical trials. Researchers can’t make progress in drug discovery, however, if they don’t understand the underlying mechanisms of the diseases they hope to treat first.
To make safe and effective drugs and therapies to treat diseases, it’s important that researchers understand the mechanisms of how the disease works within the body. By utilizing human models in their studies, researchers can break down and isolate different mechanisms of a disease to study how it interacts with the body piece by piece. For example, various organ-on-chip models and organoids were utilized during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand things like the virus’ pathological mechanisms and intercellular variability. In another example, researchers in 2016 established an in vitro cultivation method for human norovirus. Prior to this point, researchers struggled to create a human model of the norovirus that closely resembled a host environment. Once researchers successfully created a model in 2016, they were able to more fully understand the mechanisms of the disease, and this breakthrough has acted as a backbone for ongoing research into preventative and therapeutic treatments for norovirus, including development of a vaccine (Loewa et al. 2023).
Trending Specialized Human Products from Innovative Research
Innovative Research carries a wide range of specialized human products for in vitro research use. Our catalog is stocked with plasma and serum samples from a variety of various cancer-state donors to fit oncology research applications. One such trending product is our Single Donor Human Breast Cancer Serum, click the link to browse the product page on our website.
If you’re studying chronic illness, we offer a wide selection of plasma and serum collected from donors with diagnosed diseases, such as our Single Donor Human Alzheimer’s Plasma. These samples are great for working with assays, studying disease mechanisms, or early-stage drug discovery.
We also carry a variety of deficient and depleted human biologicals, such as our IgG Depleted Human Serum. These samples are great for studying disease mechanisms, biomarker studies, and more.
Conclusion
Specialized human products play an important role in research applications around the globe. Without these specialized products, researchers face barriers to understanding the underlying mechanisms behind serious conditions and diseases. They allow for more precise drug targeting when developing preventative or therapeutic treatments and vaccines. If you’re looking for specialized human products for your next research application, Innovative Research has the samples you need to make your next breakthrough.
Citations
Loewa A, Feng JJ, Hedtrich S. Human disease models in drug development. Nat Rev Bioeng. 2023 May 11:1-15. doi: 10.1038/s44222-023-00063-3. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37359774; PMCID: PMC10173243 (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10173243/).
