‘Organs-On-Chips’ Maker Named PETA’s Company of the Year

Emulate, Inc., Receives Top Honors for High-Tech Research Tools That Replace Cruel, Ineffective Experiments on Animals

For Immediate Release:
December 17, 2014

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Years of development at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute and tens of millions of dollars in support from investors, government agencies, and pharmaceutical companies have come together to allow biotech startup Emulate, Inc., to begin to market game-changing Organs-on-Chips technology. For its work to commercialize these humane, cutting-edge research tools that have the potential to replace the use of tens of millions of animals in cruel and ineffective disease experiments and product tests, Emulate has won PETA’s award for 2014 Company of the Year.

“Emulate is leading the way when it comes to saving animals and humans by equipping scientists with the most modern, effective, and humane research tools possible,” says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. “PETA sees Organs-on-Chips as paving the way toward a world in which no animals are caged, poisoned, crippled, cut into, or killed for the sake of an unreliable experiment.”

Each chip is only the size of a computer memory stick, yet it combines real human cells and tissues to create a miniature device that accurately mimics the functioning of live human organs, models diseases, and tests ways to treat them. The Harvard-led team behind the Organs-on-Chips technology has developed 10 different models—including liver, gut, kidney, and bone marrow chips—and a system to link them together to replicate the physiology of an entire human. Studies show that the chips more accurately reflect human physiology and how it responds to substances than crude and inaccurate experiments on animals do. The chips also screen large numbers of drugs and other chemicals for safety and effectiveness much faster and less expensively than by using animals.

In addition to being extremely cruel, there is wide acknowledgement in the scientific community that experiments on animals are slow, expensive, and unreliable. The U.S.  Food and Drug Administration (FDA) states that nine out of 10 drugs that pass animal tests fail in humans because they don’t work or are dangerous. For these reasons, the FDA, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. military have all made major investments in the Organs-on-Chips technology that is being commercialized by Emulate.

Emulate will receive a framed certificate and a letter of congratulations from PETA, whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on.”

For more information, please visit PETA.org and for information about Emulate, Inc., please click here.