In the news
6 Sep 2008
2 March 2007
Dr Hadwen Trust welcomes new cell preservation technology to replace animal experiments
The Dr Hadwen Trust welcomes the announcement by Abcellute, of a new technology designed to preserve living cells used in medical research.
If this technology lives up to the claims, it could have a highly significant impact on animal experiments, some of which currently involve high levels of animal suffering. One of the ‘missing links’ in developing cell-based safety tests to replace animal testing for drugs and chemicals has been an effective way to study metabolism in the test tube. The stumbling blocks have been poor availability of human liver cells, and the fact that they deteriorate quickly in culture.
The Abcellute product could address both these problems. This means that some chemical poisoning tests on rodents, dogs and primates could be replaced by test-tube methods, as well as some animal experiments studying human liver diseases, such as hepatitis C. If successful this would be a major step forward in non-animal replacements, making the research both more humane and more relevant to patients.
However, the Dr Hadwen Trust believes it is vital that human rather than animal cells are utilised in the new technology. Continuing to use animal cells with such promising new technology would unnecessarily perpetuate the use of animals in research and negate the valuable scientific benefits of studying more relevant human data.
The Abcellute company presented the new technology at a Parliamentary event by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) on 28 February 20071. At the moment the new technique focuses on liver cells, which are also used to assess new candidate drugs. Currently animals are used in these experiments, which can involve force-feeding or injecting them with novel drugs to observe any toxic effects in the body.
ENDS
Notes:
1 Reported in Drugresearcher.com 28/2/07
