The Future of Testing is Humane

The United States Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act is signed into law, requiring some safety substantiation of cosmetic products. This compels companies to begin testing their products on animals.

Draize Irritancy Tests, which require directly exposing animals’ eyes and skin to chemicals, are developed. Considered for decades to be the gold standard for cosmetic safety assessments, these tests cause extensive animal suffering.

The European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods is established to oversee the development and acceptance of alternative test methods that reduce, refine and replace the use of animals.

Mattek creates EpiDerm, the original lab-grown human skin, as a functional replacement for the Draize Rabbit Skin Test

Animal protection groups band together to form the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics. The coalition manages the Leaping Bunny cruelty-free certification program in the United States and Canada.

The European Union officially bans the testing of cosmetics ingredients on animals.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) approves non-animal test methods.

APRIL
FDA Modernization Act introduced in US House of Representatives

JUNE
Skin Allergy and Phototoxicity
OECD Approval

DECEMBER
The federal Humane Cosmetics Act, legislation to prohibit cosmetics animal testing and the sale of animal-tested cosmetics, is reintroduced in the U.S.

DECEMBER
The FDA Modernization Act 2.0 was passed and signed into law by President Biden. This bill, H.R. 2565 / S.2952, allows pharmaceutical scientists to develop new products using non-animal models including cell-based assays, organ chips and micro physiological systems, sophisticated computer modeling, and other human biology-based test methods.

Nonhuman animal (“animal”) experimentation is typically defended by arguments that it is reliable, that animals provide sufficiently good models of human biology and diseases to yield relevant information, and that, consequently, its use provides major human health benefits. I demonstrate that a growing body of scientific literature critically assessing the validity of animal experimentation generally (and animal modeling specifically) raises important concerns about its reliability and predictive value for human outcomes and for understanding human physiology. The unreliability of animal experimentation across a wide range of areas undermines scientific arguments in favor of the practice.

Akhtar A. The flaws and human harms of animal experimentation. Camb Q Healthc Ethics. 2015 Oct;24(4):407-19. doi: 10.1017/S0963180115000079. PMID: 26364776; PMCID: PMC4594046.

The PETA International Science Consortium Ltd. helped fund the development of Mattek Life Sciences’ EpiAlveolar, a first-of-its-kind 3-dimensional model of the deepest part of the human lung. The model, composed of human cells, can be used to study the effects of inhaling different kinds of chemicals, pathogens, and (e-)cigarette smoke.

First discussed in detail by W.M.S. Russell and R.L. Burch 50 years ago in their book, The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique, and now fully integrated into forward-looking publications such as Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy, the concept of replacing animals in test procedures with human cells and/or human cell-derived in vitro 3-D tissues is being embraced by the world’s research scientists and toxicologists at an ever-increasing rate. 3-D in vitro models are being utilised not only for humanitarian reasons, but also because human 3-D tissues, in particular, produce more-physiologically relevant scientific data.

Animals are historically poor indicators of human clinical outcomes, but for lack of better methods, animal testing has been required by U.S. regulatory agencies to ensure consumer safety for nearly 100 years. The disadvantage is that rodents, rabbits, and dogs don’t share enough biological and physiological similarities with humans, making the data from animal experiments unreliable and poorly predictive of human outcomes in clinical trials.

XCellR8, The Future of Testing is Humane.

The major drivers of the non-animal alternative testing technologies market include technological advances in drug development, ethical concerns on animal experimentations, high costs of animal studies, government programs for non-animal testing, rise in the number of research and development activities, raising investments and research grants for developing alternative technologies, increasing collaborations and partnerships to reduce animal testing, non-animal testing methods in the cosmetics industry are gaining traction, and increasing social awareness against animal cruelty.