According to the directive, the authority has been instructed to reduce animal testing for chemical safety assessments by 30% until 2025 and to exclude all applications on the basis of mammalian studies until 2035. All applications from 2035 onwards that still involve animal experiments require the express consent of the administration. From 2019, annual conferences will also be held to discuss the development of non-animal methods.

The policy is a logical conclusion of the alteration of the Toxic Substances Control Act, amendment Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act in 2916, with which the dependence on animal testing should be reduced. also, the objective 3.3 of the Strategic Plan 2018-2022 provides for the obligation to reduce dependence on animal testing within five years.

In this context, the EPA is awarding 4.25 million dollars for the promotion of research on alternative methods to animal testing.

The funding will go to
- Johns Hopkins University for the development of a brain model based on human cells in order to investigate the developmental neurotoxic mechanisms of environmental chemicals,
- to Vanderbilt University to take their blood-brain barriers on the chip to investigate possible brain injury caused by organophasphate exposure,
- to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center to use its Endo-Chipo technology to to investigate how preexisting diseases affect the cell reactions to environmental toxins. The focus is on reproductive diseases in women,
- to Oregon State University to develop in vitro test methods to replace fish in investigation of environmental chemicals in complex mixtures,
- to the University of California Riverside, which uses human cells to cost-effectively characterize potential embryotoxic substances.

Click here for the original memorandum:
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-09/image2019-09-09-231249.txt

Source:
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/administrator-wheeler-signs-memo-reduce-animal-testing-awards-425-million-advance