4/15/2021 0 Comments Lab Still Alive Save
Thats particularly important in toxicology, where animal skin tests have long been a baseline for understanding the effects of new, untested compounds.When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.The campaign was so effective, it led to several beauty companies pledging hundreds of thousands of dollars toward research to find alternative testing methods that didnt involve animals.Almost 40 years later, what are some of these alternatives, and how much progress have we made Before we delve into the answer, theres one important distinction to make: although animal testing usually conjures up the image of defenseless rabbits being prodded and poked in the name of beauty, the use of animals in research and the search for alternatives stretches far beyond the cosmetics industry.
Lab Still Alive Save Skin Tests HaveAnimals like mice and rats are widely used in toxicology, the study of chemicals and their effects on us. In biomedical research, animal models are the foundation of many experiments that help researchers investigate everything from the functioning of circuits in the brain to the progression of disease in cells. Do Animals Get Seasick Despite their importance in these fields, there are now efforts to reduce the number of animals used in testing. Thats due, in part, to ethical concerns that are driving new legislation in different countries. In theory, non-animal tests could be much cheaper and much faster, said Warren Casey, the director of the U.S. National Toxicology Programs Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods, which analyzes alternatives to animal use for chemical- safety testing. Another concern is that in some types of research, animals are too different from humans to successfully predict the effects that certain products will have on our bodies. So weve got ethics, efficiency and human relevance, Casey told Live Science, the three main factors driving the hunt for alternatives. Researchers are developing computational models that crunch huge quantities of research data to predict the effects of certain products on an organism. Its very cheap, said Hao Zhu, an associate professor of chemistry at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Zhu is part of a research team that has developed a high-speed algorithm that extracts reams of information from online chemical databases, to compare thousands of tested chemical compounds with new, untested ones by identifying structural similarities between them. Typically, identifying the effects of a new compound would require scores of expensive, time-consuming animal tests. But computational predictions like this could help to lessen the amount of animal research required. If we can show that the compound we want to put onto the market is safe, then I think these kinds of studies could be a replacement for current animal studies, Zhu said. A similar study from researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland showed that algorithms could even be better than animal tests at predicting toxicity in various compounds. How Psychedelic Drugs Create Such Weird Hallucinations Miniature organs In recent years, scientists have started growing cultured human cells on scaffolds embedded on plastic chips, forming tiny structures that mimic the functioning of our heart, liver, kidneys and lungs. Known as organs-on-a-chip, these could provide a novel way to test the effects of new compounds or drugs on human cells. Testing on these simplified, miniaturized versions of our physiology could deliver more human-relevant results than animal experiments. Crucially, the tests could also replace the use of whole animals in the exploratory stages of early research, when scientists dont necessarily need to test on whole systems. Organs-on-a-chip for the most part address a single output or endpoint, Casey said because all that may be required at this early stage is to test the behavior of one cell type in response to a drug or a disease, as a way to guide future research. This could help in most cases to reduce the amount of animal tests researchers are planning within ongoing projects, said Florian Schmieder, a researcher who is working on that goal by developing miniature kidney and heart models at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology, in Germany. As well as lungs, livers and hearts, some companies are developing artificial 3D structures that replicate human skin.
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