Episode 2: 'Organoids and a large portion of Chips!' with special guest Prof Thomas Hartung!

We tackle ethics, organoid intelligence and will we ever stop using animals?
Watch the video here too.

00:01:03,59: Introducing our special guest Professor Thomas Hartung from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

00:01:39,03: Marianna and Stephen talk about their extensive travels this month. Includes wonderful meeting at Yale Medical School where there's a lot of people and lots of technologies of organoids and spatial transcriptomics that are really advancing in urological research and teaching young scientists at the Xerox summer school for organ on chip systems in Tubingen.

00:05:20,59: Thomas Hartung, tells us about his background, interests and more and exciting new opportunities.
 
 00:09:14,71: Now we talk about ethics in using organoids and organ on a chips, a very big area and a hot topic inc: Intellectual property, regulation, consent, approvals, living donors, data ownership and need for clarity, organoid intelligence and more.
 
 00:21:17,66: We take a look at some of the reasons and meaning behind evidence based shifts to animal alternatives in research and its challenges. We then look at and discuss examples of why another can't
 represent a human? Will we ever stop using research animals? And how can a simple organoid really replace a big animal? Memory, learning and cognition with organoid intelligence?
 
 00:40:13,31: We pose the question; What do you see as the biggest obstacle science faces in adopting non animal techniques and what can be done to overcome them? Us and the next generation learning to and design our experiments in a different way using MPS tools rather than animal models. Show in a human complex in vitro system.
 
00:44:26,67: Demonstrating with objective data what we can get and what we can't get from animals. 

00:45:20,06: I'm really loving this! The shift towards alternatives to
animals is also a part of a larger part of society and where we are in the world. We discuss the economic costs, the maths of the research and impact seen. 

00:48:30,26: Quick recap on the ‘3Rs’ Reduction, Refinement, Replacement in practice.

00:50:18,78: The ethics of AI and potential consciousness of neural organised chips and organoid intelligence. What exactly is organoid intelligence? Are these terms which have meaning in everyday life, intelligence or self-awareness, consciousness relevant? When does intelligence start? 

00:57:08,51: Harrison Ford in the ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Humanoids’.

01:04:35,87: Can we use brain organoids today for testing drugs or
other stimuli? Let's talk about the ethics of it.

01:14:14,38: Wrap up, The Beatles, conferences coming up, beer, guitar and pizza.
 

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