Amid growing concerns over the ethics and predictive limitations of animal testing both domestically and internationally, interest in alternative technologies is increasing. Among the leading alternatives are organoids (miniature organs based on stem cells), organ-on-a-chip systems, and AI-powered digital twins.

South Korean startup Oprimed has developed an AI technology that creates digital twins (virtual patients) statistically indistinguishable from actual clinical trial participants. This allows for the preclinical prediction of drug outcomes, potentially replacing human subjects in early testing phases. The same approach can also be applied to animals, whose biological structures are simpler than humans, enabling the creation of animal digital twins.

Suji Hong, CEO of Oprimed, stated,

“Our technology learns from animal data to predict drug outcomes such as toxicity and pharmacokinetics, serving as an alternative to animal testing.Additionally, by replicating experimental animal data, we can propose methods that reduce the number of animals used in experiments by more than half.”