Experiments on a human body

Ficam’s premises have dark green lockers and bright yellow floors. The B building at Kauppi campus is very retro, showing no signs of recent renovations. The new premises are just around the corner. The Schools of Medicine and Health Sciences together with Biomeditech will all move to the new Arvo 2 building. Ficam will move there in the summer.

For a long time, the animal testing unit’s move to the new building has been a question mark. The use of small mammals as test animals has been considered in the building plans. However, the testing unit’s equipment had not been decided on by the end of March. The need for the unit has been on the table, too.

“We are not there yet, but in the future, we could have a miniature human being on this well plate.”

Besides the animal testing unit, also Ficam’s work has been challenged. Mannerström thinks that the discussion about cell-based tests may lead to questioning other people’s work.

“If we talk about the poor equivalence between a mouse and a human, it does undermine the years of work with mice.”

Tuula Heinonen says one source of prejudice is the faith people involved in animal testing have in their own methods. Besides this, they are not necessarily familiar with cell-based methods.

Alternatives to animal testing are criticized for the conditions in singular cell culture models: they are not similar enough to a human body.

Regardless, Tarja Toimela looks ahead to the future.

“We are not there yet, but in the future, we could have a miniature human being on this well plate. In theory, we could already have models mimicking different human organs inside that plate. Blood vessels could be connected with tiny pumps.”

Toimela graduated from the University of Tampere with a doctoral degree in 2004. She herself has worked in animal testing “in the year x”. The work involved neurophysiology. They anaesthetized rats and measured electric impulses in their brain, and they even drilled the animals’ skulls.

“We didn’t bring them back from their sleep after that. They didn’t feel any pain. But still, it wasn’t my thing. I could have continued with the work but I didn’t want to. I quit.”

Tarja Toimela started at Ficam in 2007. Her contract is temporary, but she believes she will be able to continue her job after this contract ends.