New Drug Testing Does Not Involve Animals
In an effort to streamline testing methods and increase efficiency, government labs will begin to use non-animal testing methods such as cells and computer models to test chemicals, drugs and toxins for safety, officials said on Thursday.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Human Genome Research Institute, both part of the NIH, said they would begin a collaborative effort to ensure that testing methods were accurate before fully expanding the program.
NHGRI director Dr. Francis Collins doesn’t expect the new method to be able to accurately predict what chemicals will do to humans.
"It’s slow. It’s expensive," Collins said. "We are not rats and we are not even other primates."
"After all, ultimately what you are looking for is, does this compound do damage to cells? Can we, instead of looking at a whole animal, look at cells from different organs?"
Although progress is slow, starting with cross-checking the new rapid tests against older tests of known toxins, NIEHS head Dr. Samuel Wilson said automated labs can now use non-animal methods to test 100,000 compounds in up to 15 concentrations in two days.
"One person would have to work eight hours a day, seven days a week for six months to do that. It’s much, much faster," Wilson said.
In the journal Science, the NIH and EPA said that between 10 and 100 tests with rats and mice can be done within a year, while tests can be produced somewhat faster by using alternative animals such as fish and fruit flies. But neither compare to the estimated 10,000 tests which can be run every day using specialized cells or lab chips.
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