Debbie Holliday – Validating cell culture models of breast cancer at Leeds University
What are the strengths and weaknesses of non-animal techniques in medical research?
The major strength of non-animal techniques is using human tissue to study human disease. This means that the type of experiments performed are physiologically relevant and data can be validated against human tissue samples. The weakness is that experiments performed with human cells within the laboratory can lack the complexity of a whole organism be that human or animal. More recent work involving complex 3 dimensional culture systems are beginning to overcome these problems.
What are the main hurdles to the development of alternative methods to animal experiments in your field of research?
When using primary cells in breast cancer research a major hurdle has been the regular supply of good quality primary tissue, something which we have overcome in our laboratory. It is also technically challenging to identify and grow the primary cells in the correct environment to allow them to maintain the characteristics which they have within the body. There are also funding hurdles as using human derived factors necessary to grow the cells is much more expensive (typically 20x more expensive) than animal derived equivalents which can restrict the number of experiments we are able to perform.
What are the main motivations to explore the use of non-animal methods?
From my perspective it’s the ability to accurately study human disease using physiologically relevant systems– i.e. using human tissue.
How do the aims and objectives of the Dr Hadwen Trust fit in your research?
By developing multicellular 3 dimensional models we aim to show that many of the experiments performed in animals can be replicated in our physiologically relevant human system therefore replacing the need for animal experiments.
From your own experience, do you find that the replacement of the use of animals in medical research is becoming more accepted in the science community?
Development of more complex human in vitro systems to replace animal experiments has certainly become more widely recognised in the scientific community. It is still a challenge to prove that the types of experiments performed in animals can be accurately replicated in our human systems and in many cases animal experiments are still regarded as the gold standard. This means that publication in high quality journals can be difficult without validation of the data in published animal models and is this validation is commonly requested during the peer review process.
In the future, what breakthrough would be necessary in order to promote and facilitate the development of non-animal methods?
Further validation of alternatives, such as our 3 dimensional models, against human data and previously published animal experiments. This will prove firstly that in vitro alternatives can provide clinically relevant human data and secondly that data produced in animals can be replicated using in vitro alternatives thus replacing the need for animal experiments. Once these validation steps are complete the data needs to be published in high quality scientific journals which will lead to their acceptance within the science community.