( In order to restrict the use animals fo...)Grant Encourages Drug Testing Sans Animals,Health

In order to restrict the use animals for the purpose of drug testing which is currently in vogue//, new techniques are being developed by researchers at the University of Manchester, well supported with a whopping 130,000￡ as a financial grant.

Gauging the carcinogenic effects of new drugs are often fruitless using current parameters which further necessitates the use of live animals to establish their safety.

Gentronix , a research company founded by Dr Richard Walmsley and colleagues at the University, have developed techniques using cultured human cells to more effectively weed out cancer-causing compounds.

"The current pre-animal tests that are used are highly sensitive and so most carcinogens are identified," said Dr Walmsley, who is based in the Faculty of Life Sciences. "Unfortunately, such tests have poor specificity and a lot of safe compounds are also wrongly identified as potential carcinogens. This means that animal testing is still carried out, in case such compounds turn out to be safe. "The testing process developed at Gentronix has proven very reliable at telling us whether a drug will cause cancer but some chemicals, called promutagens, only become carcinogenic once they have passed through the body's liver.

"This grant will help us develop new non-animal experiments to identify these other toxic compounds and so reduce the need for animal testing."

The funding – awarded by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) – will help the scientists establish new genotoxicity tests using cultured human liver cells. It is hoped the new test will not only reduce the number of compounds that are tested on animals but also ensure harmless chemicals that could prove to be useful new drugs are not falsely labeled as carcinogens.

"I don't believe that animal testing will disappear from drug safety assessment in the short term as you can't ask human
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