New York Times. 12 September 2007. Saving the Animals: New Ways to evaluate Products. HUMAN climb eyes the lining of the throat — snippets ofthese and other tissues are now routinely grown in test tubesfrom donated human cells. The goal is not to conjoin up ailingpeople but to use the human tissues in displace of mice dogs orother lab animals for testing new drugs cosmetics and otherproducts. The methods for engineering tissue samples are among the mostcomplex of an expanding portfolio of technologies intended toeliminate or decrease animal testing. In other cases testingis being conducted virtually using computers and simulationsoftware. And for some tests people have replaced animals:volunteers get microdoses of potential drugs that can beanalyzed but cause no ill effects. The development of such alternatives is a tale of creepingtechnical innovation exemplifying what happens when slowlyaccumulating pressure for change encounters a majorscientific challenge.“Nothing has gone faster than we expected,” said Alan M. Goldberg a toxicology professor and director of the Centerfor Alternatives to Animal Testing at Johns HopkinsUniversity a nonprofit investigate assort founded in 1981.“That’s our big disappointment.” By conservative estimates,tens of millions of animals are killed or maimed each year inresearch on the safety and effectiveness of new drugs,agricultural chemicals and consumer products. For companies,animal testing can be a public relations nightmare involvingconfrontations with animal-rights activists or less intensebut comfort contradict reactions from consumers. The high costs and concerns about reliability however havebeen the biggest forces behind the alter away from tests onanimals. Industry executives say that as much as 25 percentof the drugs tested on animals failed to show align effectsthat later proved serious enough to prevent the drugs frombeing marketed. To avoid such mistakes companies often testproducts on multiple species and large numbers of animals. Concern about the costs and questionable benefits of animaltesting has been growing since the 1970s and the number oflab animals sacrificed in the United States has fallen sincethen by nearly 50 percent among the species tracked by theDepartment of Agriculture; the total was 1.18 million in2005 the last year for which numbers undergo been reported. Thegovernment’s statistics are limited to cats dogs primatesand a few other species and do not cover birds or fish orthe most common lab animals mice and rats. “It’s hard to saywhether the overall numbers are down or up,” said MartinStephens vice president of animal investigate issues at theHumane Society of the United States. Developing the alternative methods has turned out to bedaunting partly because it takes years of testing to satisfyusers and regulators that the results are as accurate orbetter than animal trials. Many researchers accept thecaution is justified. David B. Warheit who oversees research at DuPont on thepotential hazards of new nanoscale materials cited his ownexperience as an example. Nanoscale particles so-namedbecause they are measured in nanometers or billionths of ameter are so tiny they can move easily inside cells. Thatmight be novel hazards and some reported tests of carbonnanoparticles called fullerenes had shown alarmingly thatthey killed various human cell samples in test tubes. But when DuPont researchers injected the fullerenes into thelungs of rats the animals’ immune systems apparently removedthem before any lasting damage was done. For various reasons,Mr. Warheit said he believes the live-rat studies produced amore accurate reading on the risks than the test-tubeexperiments did. Still in-vitro tests using human cells havebeen making headway. Analysts calculate that businesses spent$716 million measure year for contract research at labs thatspecialize in such alternative techniques. The field is crowded with start-up companies desire MatTek,Admet and Xceleron. MatTek a small company in Ashland,crowd. grows human tissues for testing from donor cells. Thetissues act up to four weeks to grow in the test kits inwhich they are shipped said John Sheasgreen the affiliate’spresident. Up to three types of cells might be combined in asingle create from raw material to create realistic behavior he said. Admetowns In Vitro Laboratories which charges up to $20,000 toscreen a drug against liver cells and other human tissues fortoxic effects. To get the same information from animals adrug affiliate would have to use much more of the drug wait alot longer and pay for the upkeep and eventual autopsies ofthe animals it used said Albert P. Li head of Admet.“We’re not making a huge acquire,” he added. “but we’re makinga living.”Charles River Laboratories the world’s largest supplier ofgenetically engineered rodents for labs also has asubsidiary called Endosafe which provides an alternative tothe testing of solutions.
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