19 June 2018
Earlier this year, the US Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM) published its new Strategic Roadmap for Establishing New Approaches to Evaluate the Safety of Chemicals and Medical Products. This seminal document offers a consensus perspective, incorporating the views of 16 federal regulatory and research agencies, several interagency workgroups and public opinion.
The Roadmap provides a conceptual framework supporting the development, evaluation and use of the “new approach methodologies” (NAM), expediting the use of human relevant methods and reducing reliance on existing animal-based approaches to risk assessment. Its overall aim is: “To expedite the use of 21st-century science to protect and improve public health, federal agencies and stakeholders will work together to build a new framework to enable development, establish confidence in, and ensure use of new approaches to toxicity testing that improve human health relevance and reduce or eliminate the need for testing in animals.” [Read more…]
The number of scientists using sophisticated human cell-based methods to study tuberculosis (TB) is increasing, improving understanding of this deadly disease and potentially reducing the number of animals used in TB research. That is the major finding of a 