"The ultimate goal is to build a lung that breathes, a heart that pumps, a liver that metabolizes, and a kidney that excretes -- all connected by a tubing infrastructure much akin to the way blood vessels connect our organs," Iyer added. "While some skeptics might believe that this is a utopian dream... the team is confident that this is indeed achievable."
Something called the Advanced Tissue-engineered Human Ectypal Network Analyzer project might sound like a secret weapon being developed by S.H.I.E.L.D. In fact, it's a project being developed here in the real would that could change the way new drugs and toxic agents are screened.
Led by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Athena project aims to create mini versions of four artificial organs -- liver, lung, heart, and kidney -- that can be connected inside a fake torso. Each organ will be about the size of a smartphone screen, according to LANL, and be connected by tubing filled with artificial blood. All together, the Athena "body" should be small enough to sit on a desk.
"By developing this 'homo minutus,' we are stepping beyond the need for animal or Petri dish testing: There are huge benefits in developing drug and toxicity analysis systems that can mimic the response of actual human organs," Rashi Iyer, a senior scientist at LANL leading the Athena organ project, said in a statement.
The artificial mini human will be built over the five-year course of the project, which has a budget of $19 million and is supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a subdivision of the Department of Defense (not quite S.H.I.E.L.D., but it's the best we got)
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source:Cnet
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