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4 hours ago
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I write in response to your editorial on animals in research (The Guardian view on animal testing: we can stop sacrificing millions of lives for our own health, 23 November). I am supportive of many aspects of the strategy to aid the development, validation and uptake of alternative methods to replace the use of animals. However, much of this is geared towards regulatory testing, where the goals are more readily achievable, rather than for discovery science.
All scientists working with animals in the UK have signed up to the 3Rs: replacement (developing alternatives), reduction and refinement. But we are definitely not ready to abandon research with animals, and for some disciplines we may never get to this. Advances in the ability to generate large amounts of detailed information about gene activity in cells and computer analysis have been amazing, but much of this is correlative. To prove causation still requires testing.
It will hopefully be possible to use new approach methodologies (NAMs), but only after these are validated against animals or humans. With complex areas of biology, such as the brain and behaviour, reproductive and endocrine systems, the immune system, tumour biology, or where there is a need to account for ageing, altered physiologies, environmental effects, etc, no current NAM gets anything close to the real biology.
Prematurely pushing this strategy is unlikely to help new discoveries relevant to treating or preventing disorders and diseases in humans or animals. It will also demotivate the excellent, highly motivated and well-trained animal technologists who are essential to much of the work on animals that goes on in the UK – and, critically, for their care. Loss of these skilled and conscientious people will affect the UK’s competitiveness and the wellbeing of the animals. However, aspects of using NAMs could perhaps be sped up, for which additional funding would help. This is largely for testing toxicity and pharmacokinetics, which are relatively simple assays where current regulations stipulate testing in animals. Changing the regulations now, but still with a need to show safety, would help adoption of NAMs in such cases.
Dr Robin Lovell-Badge
Principal group leader, Francis Crick Institute; president, Institute of Animal Technologists
Your editorial misses a crucial point – that the overwhelming majority of studies performed using new approach methodologies (NAMs) still rely on products obtained from animals. While the cells themselves can be derived from human stem cells, the matrix on which they grow, and the growing mediums needed for them to develop and survive, require animal-derived tissue. NAMs such as organoids and organs-on-a-chip mostly rely on an essential growing matrix called matrigel, which is derived from a mouse sarcoma tumour grown within the animal until it is killed and the tumour removed and processed to produce matrigel. They also often require culturing in products such as foetal bovine serum, which contain essential growth factors and which synthetic alternatives cannot currently replace.
Increased investment in NAMs may help to identify and develop alternatives to animal products and lead to a truly animal-free future for these technologies, but right now these alternatives are limited and most studies performed using these methods will be using animal-derived products – including those that require procedures to be performed in living animals. It is easy to say that alternatives will quickly emerge and replace animals completely, but biology is extremely complicated and the reality may prove much harder.
These technologies are also likely to be limited to specific areas of science for the foreseeable future. It is difficult to envisage that understanding the biology of complex disease such as those involving developmental changes, ageing or requiring understanding of the interactions between biology and the environment will be replaced by these technologies, so if we want to continue to make medical advances, the use of animals in research – strictly regulated, as it is in the UK – must unfortunately continue.
Prof Emma Robinson
Professor of psychopharmacology, University of Bristol
