Living Cruelty Free

In Vitro International is a provider of non-animal testing methods. It develops and commercializes test kits to perform non-animal-tests, and provides more complex laboratory services with non-animal-testing methods. InVitro’s test kits are typically utilized by manufacturers of surfactants, petrochemicals, cosmetics, textiles, paper and pulp, pharmaceuticals, films and resins, solvents and cleaners, and other chemical raw materials — you know, all those people who provide the raw materials for the finished products you buy in the store. (I’m going to attempt to describe InVitro International’s test kits in the next few paragraphs — please remember that I am not a scientist and if you’d like a more accurate description of these tests, you should go to InVitro International’s webpage).

InVitro International’s products include:

• The InVitro Irritection Assay System — this is a variety of applications which assess ocular and/or dermal irritation. The test itself involves a “membrane disc that permits controlled delivery of the test material to a reagent solution, and a proprietary reagent solution that is composed of proteins, glycoproteins, lipids, and low molecular weight components that self-associate to form a complex macromolecular matrix.” The system uses Windows software for automatic transfer and analysis of data, thus providing accurate and reproducible test results in 24 hours.

• Corrositex — Corrositex is a corrosivity test that is a replacement for (the appallingly inhumane) Draize test (if you’d like to read about Draize testing, click here, but it has very disturbing pictures). Corrositex is Department of Transportation approved, and in less than 4 hours permits assignment of United Nations Packing Group classification I, II, III or Non-Corrosive classification.

• Laboratory services — InVitro International is also available to function as an independent testing laboratory for companies who wish to outsource their irritancy and corrosivity testing. It is also available to consult with companies to establish customized test protocols and specific recommendations for implementing the Irritection technology in any company’s facility. It also provides customer support — it will provide consultation and assistance to companies using the Irritection technology.

• InVitro International also produces a DNA kit — it is called Guardian DNA, and you swab your child’s mouth and then you keep it in the Guardian DNA folder, and then it can be used to identify your child if it is ever kidnapped. (I had no idea this sort of thing even existed. Interesting.)

A point of interest about InVitro International is that it appears to be a publicly traded company — unlike MatTek and SkinEthic, which (I think) are privately owned companies, and the Institute for In Vitro Sciences, which is a nonprofit, you can buy stock in InVitro International. I think it’s interesting that these three business models make alternative-to-animal-testing-products — I’m intrigued as to why one business model hasn’t turned out to be more successful. They must each fulfill different needs?

And that concludes my four-part-series on the day to day activities of alternative-to-animal-testing methods. I hope that was informative!

The Institute for In Vitro Sciences is a nonprofit organization (located in Maryland) dedicated to the advancement of alternative testing methods. It was founded in 1997, and since then it has worked with industry, academic laboratories, and government agencies to implement non-animal-using testing strategies that will supply key toxicological information. It provides non-animal research and testing services, it sponsors workshops and training courses in in vitro methods, and it creates a forum where industry, government, and animal welfare proponents can meet to determine constructive programs which effectively reduce animal use.

The IIVS laboratory performs tests for ocular and dermal irritation, phototoxicity, skin corrosivity, biological activity studies, USP cytotoxicity for medical devices, as well as custom test development (there are links for these here, though the sublinks appear to be dead). The laboratory also provides prevalidation and validation studies. (I’ve tried to summarize the IIVS tests as described on their webpage — I am not a scientist, and I’m not sure I’m getting all the details right, so please excuse any errors I make and if you’d like a more complex and accurate description of these tests, go to the IIVS webpage.)

IIVS ocular irritation tests:

• The “tissue construct model” test is useful for testing degree of irritation-causing in very mild products such as lotions, creams, baby products, mild surfactants, and eye cosmetics. It involves applying a chemical to some MatTek EpiOcular tissue, and the length of time that chemical takes to cause any cell death is used to determine the irritatingness of that chemical — if it takes a relatively short time, it’s decided that it’s a fairly irritating product, if it takes a relatively long time, it’s marked as less irritating.
• The “bovine corneal opacity and permeability” test is used to distinguish among mild-to-moderate-to-severely irritating products. It involves taking a cow eye (which is obtained from slaughterhouses — isn’t that disgusting? I’m not entirely sure I’m in favor of this test, but it’s better than live animals), and measuring how pouring a chemical on the cow eye affects the opacity of the eye, and how it changes the cow eye’s permeability to fluorescein. If the eye is doused with the chemical, and then lots of fluorescein flows into the eye and/or the eye turns opaque, the chemical is decided to cause opacity and permeability.
• The “human keratinocyte/neutral red release” test is used to determine whether a surfactant is dangerous to the human eye. It involves pouring a surfactant onto a skin equivalent, and the damage the surfactant does to the skin is measured (surfactants are common cosmetic ingredients — they lower the surface tension of a liquid). Apparently this is used because a skin equivalent is representative of the cells that cover the surface of the eye.
• The “transepithelial passage” eye irritation test is very useful in estimating the irritancy of very dilute, mild products, usually ones that will be put in beauty products that go near your eyes (you don’t want your eyes damaged, after all). It involves taking a thin layer of skin cells, pouring a chemical on them, and then measuring how much fluorescin dye can go through it. An undamaged thin layer of skin cells will not allow much fluorescin to pass — but a damaged layer of skin cells will allow the dye to pass.

IIVS’s skin irritation tests:

• The “topical application for dermal irritation” test is used to determine whether a chemical is safe for human skin or not. It involves exposing a piece of MatTek EpiDerm-skin-equivalent to a chemical. Since EpiDerm is a “three-dimensional, differentiated, metabolically active tissue with stratified dermal and epidermal layers and a functional stratum corneum,” this simulates the actual use of putting a chemical on human skin. If it damages any cells or causes a “pro-inflammatory mediator (cytokine) release,” it’s judged to not be safe for human skin.
• The “human keratinocyte/neutral red uptake” test is a good way to measure mild irritancy. It involves taking some normal human epidermal skin cells, exposing them to some chemical, and then studying them to see if they’ve changed — “cell proliferation studies” and “inflammatory/anti-inflammatory studies” are done to them.

IIVS’s skin corrosivity tests:

• The “Corrositex” test measures the corrosivity of a chemical by seeing how far the chemical can penetrate through a “biobarrier.” The time necessary is compared to a standardized corrosivity chart to identify its U.S. Department of Transportation packing group — I assume if it’s really corrosive it goes in a stronger packaging.
• The “EpiDerm Skin Corrosivity” test is used to determine whether a chemical is corrosive, and is advantageous because it is not pH dependent, and so can “address a wide range of chemical classes in addition to acids, bases, and acid derivatives.” It involves exposing a piece of EpiDerm-skin-equivalent to a chemical for three minutes, and then for sixty minutes. If the skin equivalent still has functioning cells after sixty minutes, the chemical is determined to be a noncorrosive.

IIVS also has a number of educational programs that aim to spread in vitro methods through the scientific community through cooperation, exchange of information, and training. IIVS brings together toxicologists and scientific experts working in the field to learn about in vitro methods, identify their tests limitations and strengths, and to development improvement strategies. IIVS also provides hands-on laboratory training to ensure that test-users learn the proper methods of in vitro testing. IIVS offers three types of workshops:

• “Technical workshops,” which train a small group of people to learn the specific technical aspects of specific assays,
• “User groups,” which are larger, open forums whose purpose is to share information about how well a specific test performs and whose participants usually include toxicologists, representatives of regulatory agencies, and individuals from animal welfare organizations, and some
• “General workshops” that include hands-on training in several different in vitro assays so that attendees become acquainted with a variety of alternative methods.

If you’d like to attend any of the IIVS educational offerings, the News & Events calendar lists their times and dates.

IIVS also runs a forum that allows scientists, regulators, animal rights activists to meet and talk about alternative methods and the details thereof. The first one will be held on October 15th-18th in Italy. It is organized by scientists active in the field of toxicology, life sciences, biostatistics, modeling and medicine, and is supported by the European Commission. The goal of the forum is to explore the concept of evidence-based toxicology, following the success of “evidence based medicine” (the link sends you to the Wikipedia entry on evidence-based medicine, which I think was basically a movement which aims to have someone stand over doctors to critique their judgment calls — if they suggest treating some ailment with surgery, someone will point out that in that situation, 90% of other doctors prescribed pills instead, that the failure rate was 60% for the surgery, and maybe the doctor should think about suggesting pills instead. Some people view it as improving medical care with statistics.) So it would follow that evidence based toxicology would involve having toxicologists make decisions in a more “transparent” manner — i.e., before making a decision they will consult standardized recommendations and see what other toxicologists are doing — they won’t be able to make judgment calls any more, they’ll have to make sure they’re following the best practices. I think this is a really interesting idea — I’m interested to see how it plays out, and how it affects alternatives to animal testing.

If you’d like to donate to IIVS, click here.

SkinEthic Laboratories (which I mentioned in this post about L’Oreal going cruelty-free) is another producer of skin equivalents that replace animals in testing cosmetics. SkinEthic has a cell culture process that was first developed in France in 1992, which allows it to mass produce in vitro reconstructed human tissue with “well characterized histology, functionality, and ultrastructure features.” SkinEthic provides its clients with thousands of pseudo-human tissues every week. It produces reconstructed human skin, reconstructed human epidermis with different amounts of pigment, human eye tissue, human oral tissue, human throat tissue, human vaginal tissue, and human lung tissue equivalents.

Have you ever wondered how non-animal-using cosmetic tests are done? I’ve written a lot in my animal testing alternatives page about the fact that alternatives are possible, but I never really detailed exactly how they happen on a day-to-day basis. So far, I’ve found 4 companies that run cruelty-free cosmetics tests (if you know of any more, please tell me):

The first one is MatTek Corporation, which produces “ready-to-use, human cell-derived, 3-D, organotypic in vitro tissue equivalents.” MatTek tissue equivalents are mitotically and metabolically active, and closely mimic live skin both structurally and biochemically. MatTek tissue equivalents refine, reduce, and replace traditional animal-based testing, eliminate the errors that come from assuming that chemicals that don’t harm rabbit-skin won’t harm human skin, and enable “genomic, proteomic, and drug delivery/discovery research not possible with traditional animal, monolayer cell culture or clinical test procedures.”

MatTek produces 4 different types of skin equivalents (EpiDerm, EpiDerm-FT, MelanoDerm and Melanoma), an eye-tissue equivalent (EpiOcular), an airway equivalent (EpiAirway), a cheek tissue equivalent (EpiOral), a gum tissue equivalent (EpiGingival), and an ectocervico-vaginal equivalent (EpiVaginal). It also produces Human Immune Cell equivalents. These tissue equivalents are very useful to test products that will come in contact with human skin, or are designed to interact with or permeate these types of tissues.

MatTek Corporation was founded in 1985 by two chemical engineering professors in Massachusetts. Its products dramatically reduce product cost, increase lab efficiency, and humanely reduce the number of animals used in research. MatTek’s human cell-based models are widely used in the United States, Europe, and Japan by commercial companies and academic reserachers. MatTek’s products have been used for a wide array of tests — from skin irritation to cystic fibrosis research — an extensive list of technical references is available that documents MatTek products’ broad problem solving capabilities.