Before pharmaceutical companies can introduce new products to market, they follow rigorous protocols to ensure safety and efficacy. During the development process, these companies spend a good deal of time and money testing their formulas on animals and then humans.

A researcher in the United Kingdom is conducting important research that bridges the gap between research on animals and humans. By investigating the impact of its clients’ formulations on donated organs and tissues provided by IIAM, the company helps pharmaceutical firms effectively identify the best candidate drug for further development, thereby reducing their expenditures, without compromising drug safety.

“Traditionally, about 90 percent of new drugs fail in human clinical trials for two primary reasons: their safety and their effectiveness in humans,” said the researcher’s Clinical Alliances Manager. “The results we achieve through testing drugs on human tissue enable our clients to identify potential problems in the early stages of research and predict their efficacy in human clinical trials with much more accuracy.”

In 2017, the company conducted a study investigating the contractile properties of a new drug formulation on blood vessels using livers provided by IIAM. “The results were very convincing, and the client was very pleased,” said the researcher’s Study Director.

“Presently, we are studying lungs, hearts and gastrointestinal organs to identify expected and unexpected side effects during the drug development process using the various functional assays on contraction/relaxation of muscles and vessels, membrane permeability, ion channel transport, and inflammatory responses that we provide.”

Working with IIAM for nearly a decade, the company considers us a valuable resource because of our responsiveness, because of our ability to meet often-rigorous criteria and because OPOs are limited in the UK.

“IIAM is fantastic to work with,” said the Clinical Alliances Manager. She singled out Allyson Samuel, Client Services Representative at IIAM. “Allyson is extremely accommodating, especially to changes in our protocols. We have monthly phone conferences to keep in regular contact, and she has invited us to participate in several educational events organized by IIAM, which have been extremely interesting.”