Microdosing is a technique that allows to observe a molecule’s behaviour in a human body through the administration of doses so low they are unlikely to produce whole-body effects, but high enough to allow the cellular response to be studied.

The substance’s transportation, métabolization (transformation) and elimination is then observed.

This observation is carried out using highly sensitive detection methods. For example, tomography which measures the distribution of a substance throughout the body and spectrometry, carried out on samples, which detects the different substances present, including the most infinitesimal concentrations.

Transposition of the results

Even if the microdosing technique provides precise and reliable information on the reaction of a human body to a low dose, there may be differences with some molecules if the quantity is increased. In this case it is necessary to transpose from a low dose to a high dose.

The necessity to transpose some results can be reproached to microdosing, however, this knowledge concerns directly the human body.

A better understanding of the human body can only be beneficial to our medicine. On the other hand, the knowledge necessary to transpose the results of hazardous animal models to humans is not very useful.

Sources

• Gabriel Gachelin – De l’animal expérimental au modèle en recherche biomédicale
• Malcolm Rowland – Microdosing and the 3Rs
• R. Colin Garner – The human microdosing concept