CeeTox — one of the non-animal-testing companies I mentioned the other day — won a “Proggy” from PETA for advancing non-animal-testing.  Proggy awards are given to innovative companies that have made some animal-friendly achievements in the last year.  Yay for a little non-animal-testing recognition, eh?

Tags : against animal testing, alternatives to animal testing, ceetox, peta, proggy

The Netherlands Toxicogenomics Centre has decided to devote 54 million euros ($78 million in U.S. dollars) to alternative-to-animal-testing-methods. A scientist at the NTC is quoted as saying:

“In vitro testing in combination with genomics will contribute to the development of valuable alternatives for the present testing methods, which are largely dependent on animal testing.”

Isn’t that fantastic? The article does not mention what brought this huge increase in funding to alternatives to animal testing — was it a general increase in popular sentiment against animal testing? Technological breakthroughs that make alternative methods seem more possible now than in the past? The imminent arrival of the animal-testing-for-cosmetic-purposes ban that will go into effect in 2013 in Europe? The news article does mention that the government will provide 25 million euros, and that the other 29 million will come from contributions from the NTC’s own research institutions and industry.

I looked up the NTC’s webpage, and I find it really fascinating that they’re attempting to combine in vitro testing methods with genomic technologies. They state that current toxicological research is bad for two reasons:

1. Because it uses animals as models for humans, which is just poor science, and,
2. Because it uses short-term (inhumane) laboratory experiments and extrapolates from them to theorize about how poisons will affect people over long periods of time, which is crazy because many poisons are only poisonous over long periods of time.

The NTC’s field is “toxicogenomics” — the “application of genomics-based technologies in toxicological research.” From what I can gather, it’s combining in vitro methods with those weird biotech biological-silicone chips. The NTC describes this as trying to “understand toxicological mechanisms towards developing new and better test methods that also provide alternatives to animal testing, by developing highly predictive screens based on gene expression or protein/metabolite fingerprints, to be used for in depth evaluation of chemical safety for human health, thereby replacing/reducing/refining animal experiments, and thereby, for improving the scientific basis of chemical risk assessment.”

I think this means that the NTC’s main focus is on how toxic chemicals react with genetic diseases — its current research projects focus on trying to figure out how carcinogenicity, immunotoxicity, and reproduction toxicity work (and eventually stop them, I hope!), anyway.

The NTC focuses on combining various genomics-based-techniques such as microarray-based technologies (I didn’t know what those were, so I looked them up — there’s actually a whole blog devoted to microarray-based technologies — it looks like it’s a “sequence of dots of DNA, protein, or tissue arranged on an array for easy simultaneous analysis,” usually in a silicon chip) along with other “-omics technologies” such as proteomics (the large-scale study of proteins) and metabonomics (study of the unique chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes leave behind).

I could not be more pleased that scientists in the Netherlands are combining cool biotechnology with in vitro methods. Isn’t it amazing? I hope we’ll eventually see a complete elimination of animal testing in the fields of carcinogenicity, immunotoxicity, and reproduction toxicity.

Tags : , alternatives to animal testing, cruelty free, netherlands toxicogenomics centre, toxicogenomics

John H. Draize is another name I cannot read without wincing. John H. Draize invented the “Draize test” — an irritancy test in rabbits. It involves putting a chemical directly into rabbits’ eyes and then inspecting how damaged the eyes become after a few days and up to a week. If a lot of damage occurs, it’s determined that the chemical is irritating. If not much occurs, it’s determined that the chemical is not irritating. It also applies to tests done on rabbits where the rabbit’s skin is cut, and then chemicals are poured on the cut. If the cuts become disgusting, it’s determined that the chemical is probably irritating to human skin.

So, can you see the name John H. Draize without thinking “rabbit abuser and mutilator?” Because I can’t.

Luckily, there is an alternative. One of ICCVAM’s only recommended alternative methods is Corrositex (warning: unpleasant pictures in the link), which is a non-animal test (and is frequently used by companies that produce non-animal-using-test-kits, such as InVitro International, and the Institute for In Vitro Sciences.)

Tags : alternatives to animal testing, corrositex, draize, draize test