A £22 million programme is backing technologies intended to reduce UK science's reliance on animal testing while developing models that more closely reflect human biology.
The investment includes a £20 million centre focused on growing miniature organs from human tissue.
A further £2 million is supporting nine projects including beating heart cells grown in a dish, lab-grown human ear models and designed to predict how drugs move through the body.
hope human-based models can improve the relevance of early testing as well as reduce animal use, potentially helping promising medicines move through development more effectively.