Europe resolves to create a concrete plan to end animal testing
This week, the European Parliament (EP) adopted a resolution vote, calling on the European Commission to create an ambitious but yet realistic plan of action to reduce and ultimately phase out the use of animals for scientific purposes.
The action plan needs to include reduction targets and timelines, with concrete and coordinated actions, intended to incentivize change. The EP acknowledges the lack of substantial change in the number of animals used for scientific purposes since 2010 when the Directive 2010/63/EU was introduced and calls for an EU-wide action plan to be drawn as a result of improved coordination among all key Directorates, Member States, and relevant stakeholders.
No significant change in thе number of animals used for testing can be seen in the period from 1996 to 2017.
The Directive from 2010 asserts that the use of live animals should only occur if there are no suitable alternatives available. However, the EP recognizes that non-animal methods are not yet available across all scientific research areas which calls for fast development, validation and introduction of alternative testing methods, particularly for key toxicological endpoints.
Essential roles are expected to play academic institutions in promoting alternatives to animal testing in scientific disciplines and disseminating new knowledge and practices. Nevertheless, the EP points out a need to educate, train and retrain scientists in using advanced non-animal models and in sharing best practices.
Furthermore, there is a need to raise awareness of validated, non-animal models among safety assessment experts, those involved in evaluating project proposals and attributing funding, as well as those among competent authorities.
Use of animals for scientific purposes across EU member states, 1996-2017
The significance of the matter is stressed by the nearly 10 million animals used for scientific purposes in 2017, of which 69% were for research, 23% for regulatory and 5% for production purposes.
Furthermore, the EP reports that in a single year up to 12 million animals are bred and killed for the purpose of animal testing without being used in actual experiments. These numbers probably explain why 75% of Europeans think that EU should prioritize the development of alternative methods to animal testing and why the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have drafted The Research Modernization Deal to engage both the scientific community and the regulators into a constructive discussion.
Non-animal testing models
The good news is that the toolbox of non-animal testing models is growing and has already shown potential to enhance our understanding of diseases and accelerate the discovery of effective treatments. Some of the technologies in this toolbox are organ- and body-on-chip, sophisticated computer simulations, and 3D cultures of human cells.
The organ- and body-on-chip technology represents a microfluidic system which enables the monitoring of the functioning of a cell or a group of cells while mimicking some of the essential characteristics (physical, chemical, and biological) of the tissue(s) of interest.
Some of the most exciting work in this area has been accomplished by the group of Uwe Marx. Their accomplishments have been embodied in the products of TissUse, while their vision – in a few lovely illustrative videos.
Often, when developing an organ-on-chip system, the main focus of the researchers is to emulate the interfacial characteristics of a tissue or an organ since the important interactions with a substance of interest occur at the interface with its vasculature.
Three-dimensional cell cultures, which in principle can be incorporated in an organ-on-chip system, in contrast to most, emulate the 3D environment (physical, chemical, and biological) of a cell in an organ. The 3D cell cultures can be obtained in a couple of principle ways:
by assembling specifically selected type and proportion of cells, resulting in the so called spheroids or organoids;
by embedding the cells in what is referred to as a “scaffold”.
In the former case, the cells are in a close proximity to each other, at a density typical for an organ, which enables them to function in a typical way for the organ which they are expected to mimic. As a result, they excrete the biopolymers needed to create an extracellular matrix (ECM) into their surroundings, slowly building up the environment they have previously been part of.
On the other hand, in the latter case, the scaffold needs to act as the ECM with the suitable physical and chemical characteristics. As such, the term scaffold does not do justice to the numerous and complex set of requirements which it needs to meet. For instance, it needs to have suitable hydrophilicity, elasticity, density, and viscosity and it must contain the proper molecules and peptide sequences, allowing for cell adhesion and later functioning. In fact, the challenge with the properties of the scaffold is two-fold since not only that it needs to have certain characteristics but the entirety of these characteristics is still to be established.
This is the challenge which MatriChem aims at solving and thus contributing to the goal to end animal testing.