Alternatives, to animal testing

H. G. Wada and co- Animal Testing and Experimentation submitted for publication Nov. 1991. 

Keywords Alternatives to animal testing, Computational toxicology, In silico, In vitro, Predictive models, QSAR models, Regulation... 

For all these reasons, some European regulations foresee the use of methods alternative to animal testing, such as the REACH legislation [2], and actually the cosmetics directive [3] foresees the complete ban of animal tests for cosmetics by 2013. 

However, this request of more animal testing faces several issues. There is an ethical concern on the millions of animals used every year for experiments. These tests are also those more expensive, and thus this poses questions about the costs for these experiments and the resources to cover them. Many of these tests, especially the chronic ones, require long times, years in some cases. The number of available laboratories in Europe to cover this potential request is insufficient. For all these reasons, some European regulations foresee the use of methods alternative to animal tests, such as the REACH legislation, and actually the cosmetics directive foresees the complete ban of animal tests for cosmetics by 2013. 

Frazier, J.M. and Bradlow, J.A. (1989). Technical Problems Associated with In Vitro Toxicity Testing Systems. Technical Report 1. Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, Baltimore, MA. 

Rylander, L.A., Gandolfi, A.J. and Brendel, K. (1985). Inhibition of organic acid/base transport in isolated rabbit renal tubules by nephrotoxins. In In Vitro Toxicology. A progress report from Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing. Vol. 3 (Goldberg, A.M., Ed.). Mary Ann Liebert, New York, pp. 235-247. 

Alternatives to Animal testing, Colipa, http //www.colipa.com/site/index.cfm7SID = 15588 OBJ = 15793. 

The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) maintains the alternatives to animal testing Web site (Altweb 2007), where the full text of Russell and Burch s book is freely available for download. 

Altweb. 2007. The alternatives to animal testing Web site, http //altweb.jhsph.edu/... 

Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT). Johns Hopkins University. http //caat.jhsph.edu. 

Cell culture technology can be a viable alternative to animal testing in many cases, with the possibility of increasing significantly the number of replicate samples and thus expanding the bioassay utility. Primary cell cultures have the advantage that they maintain most of the characteristics of the animal tissue from which the cells are derived. These would be ideal for bioassays except that they cannot be kept in culture indefinitely. They can be difficult and sometimes impossible to grow reproducibly, and are subject to the inherent variability of the animal they come from. 

COLIPA, Alternatives to animal testing, www.cohpa.com/alternatives.html. 

Use validated alternatives to animal testing wherever possible. 

Classic in vitro cell culture models were used earlier to test the permeability of drugs themselves (9). Nowadays, these systems display not only an alternative to animal testing in respect to ethical concerns, but are also applied as advanced models to develop new delivery strategies and to study drug delivery properties of nanoparticulate carriers or chemical delivery enhancers. Thereby, interactions with the biological barrier, specifically binding, uptake, and transport can be evaluated in a well-defined and standardized system. While oral delivery of drugs is still the commonly used and most accepted method of choice due to the... 

The ultimate goals of the LRI are to fill the knowledge gap that is distorting public debate replace misinformation with scientific data increase the knowledge of the potential impacts that chemicals may have on the health of human and wildlife populations and the environment, especially sensitive sub-populations replace decisions based on hazard alone with decisions based on risk address issues such as bio-monitoring, methodologies, endocrine disruption and provide alternatives to animal testing and persistent bioaccumulative toxic substances (PBTs). 

Swiss Institute for Alternatives to Animal Testing Aeschstrasse 14... 

Although there is currently a lot of research to replace the preclini-cal safety tests in animals with in vitro high throughput methods, so far success is limited to some metabolite and genetic toxicity screens. These methods have not been accepted yet by the regulatory authorities in the various countries as valid alternatives to animal tests. The reason is that in these screening assays too many false results are obtained to accept them as the only basis for safety assessments. 

A tiered approach to the evaluation of initial information should be considered where applicable, recognizing that all elements may not be relevant in certain cases. The tiered approach explained in Figure 3.3.1 was developed with contributions from (inter)national centres and committees for the testing and validation of alternatives to animal testing during a workshop in Solna, Sweden. ... 

Castle, P. Policy and progress of the european pharmacopeia in the use of alternatives of animal testing in vaccine production and quality control. In Alternatives to Animal Testing in the Production and Quality Control of Vaccines Present Practice and Prospectives RIVM Bilthoven, 1992 41-52. 

Castle, P. Alternatives to animal testing achievements and recent developments in the european pharmacopeia. In Development in Biological Standardization PEI Langen, 1994 86, 21-29. 

Human safety evaluations begin with the specific ingredients, and then move on to the whole product. The effects for all ingredients are considered as the product is formulated. Human safety-related data for a chemical used in a detergent or soap product (or in another type of consumer product), and for an entire formulation, can come from in silico data (from computer programs that estimate toxic properties based on data for similar chemicals, and/or from the physical chemical properties of the chemical of interest), in vitro data (from the results of alternatives to animal tests, e.g., from cell cultures used to assess eye or skin irritation potential), animal (toxicological) studies (e.g., to assess eye or skin irritation potential), and human data (examples are discussed below). 

Hakkinen PJ and Green DK (2002) Alternatives to animal testing Information resources via the Internet and World Wide Web. Toxicology 173 3-11. 

Huggins J (2003) Alternatives to animal testing Research, trends, validation, regulatory acceptance. ALTEX (Al-temativen zu Tierexperimenten) 20(Suppl. 1) 3-61. 

Alternatives to Animal Testing and Experimentation AATEX (Japanese Society of Alternatives to Animal Experimentation)... 

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