Alternativas para os testes em animais

A Comissão Europeia está seriamente decidida a buscar alternativas para o teste em animais na indústria de cosméticos.  Não é difícil imaginar que se forem encontradas alternativas para experimentação animal para cosméticos o passo seguinte será a proibição, ou grande restrição, para o uso de animais na ciência. Devemos buscar alternativas que nos darão alguns anos de possibilidade de continuar nesta área, até que os defensores dos direitos da células comecem a pedir o banimento dos experimentos em células in vitro. 

Conheça mais sobre a iniciativa da EC no site:

This FP7 Research Initiative was created through a call for proposals by the European Commission that was published in June 2009. The Cosmetics Europe industry offered to match the European Commission’s funds to make a total of EUR 50 million available to try to fill current gaps in scientific knowledge and accelerate the development of non-animal test methods. The Research Initiative focuses on the complex area of repeated dose toxicity.

The Research Initiative is a first step to addressing the long term strategic target of "Safety Evaluation Ultimately Replacing Animal Testing (SEURAT)". It is called "SEURAT-1", indicating that more steps have to be taken before the final goal will be reached. SEURAT-1 will develop knowledge and technology building blocks required for the development of solutions for the replacement of current repeated dose systemic toxicity testing in vivo used for the assessment of human safety.

The goal of the 5-year SEURAT-1 Research Initiative is to develop a consistent research strategy ready for implementation in following research programmes. This includes establishing innovative scientific tools for better understanding of repeated dose toxicity based on in vitro tests, and identifies gaps of knowledge to be bridged by future research work. The end result would be testing methods which, within the framework of safety assessment, have a higher predictive value, are faster and cheaper than those currently used, and significantly reduce the use of animal tests.

The objectives of the SEURAT-1 Research Initiative are

1. to produce and use human-based, stable cell lineages based on stem cell differentiation
2. to consider modulations in toxicological pathways through cell-cell interactions by means of artificial, organotypic cell systems
3. to assess epigenetic effects in vitro
4. to explore biomarkers for the respective toxicological pathways
5. to convert in vitro results into in vivo predictions
6. to develop prediction models based on mechanistic process understanding for future safety evaluation of chemicals in silico

Consulte as publicações do SEURAT-1 (aqui).

Um post recente do SciDev Net “Realistic alternatives to animal testing are feasible, but not so simple” trata deste assunto e traz informações e reflexões importantes:

“SEURAT’s  database of properties of 40,000 chemicals will help in computational modelling and prediction of safety levels of chemicals. From 1 Jan 2013, the EC will make it mandatory for scientists conducting animal tests to first  prove that they first searched the databases for alternate testing.

Scientists are hunting for alternatives to animal testing. Photo: Flickr.com

So far, so good. But there are problems still to be solved, an ESOF session heard.

For one, there are similar chemicals with almost similar properties and mechanisms of action, some of which are toxic and other are not. So do scientists need to test all the similar chemicals of interest in a particular toxicity or allergy test?”

Veja o post completo (aqui).