For several years, there’s been a big push to have alternatives to animal testing of drugs. Scientist Rashi Iyer of the Los Alamos National Laboratory says it’s a very slow and expensive process, so they’re developing the ATHENA system, which simulates human organs.

"It’s artificial human organs that is a bench top platform that you can use to screen drugs. There are two strengths. One is that you’re actually developing a system that simulates a human system. So we hope that our lung, for example, would breathe; liver that metabolizes; a heart that pumps. The other strength is you get very deep analysis and also in real-time. So, if you do a drug exposure you know exactly where your system is crashing."

The Los Alamos Lab, or LANL, is the lead institute in this collaborative effort.

"LANL is primarily responsible for the lung; Harvard is doing the heart system and LANL and Vanderbilt are engaged in the kidney development and all the integration. At the end of every organ completion it gets integrated at LANL."