The European Coalition to End Animal Experiments (ECEAE) warmly welcomes the decision on 29 April 2013 of the Board of Appeal (BoA) of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), allowing the appeal by chemicals giant Honeywell against ECHA’s decision that it should carry out a 90-day inhalation experiment on rabbits for a refrigerant for its car air conditioner system.

To explore new agents against the particularly aggressive glioblastoma, so far researchers have carried out especially stressful animal experiments on mice. Now researchers at the Leipzig University, Institute of Anatomy, intend to do this research on original human-specific tumor slices.

HepaChip, a miniaturised array consisting of different cell types with small channels developed by the Natural and Medical Sciences Institute (NMI) at the University of Tübingen in Reutlingen, is almost market-ready.  The new technology allows substances such as pharmaceutical drugs to be tested for liver toxicity. Pharmaceutical industry and research institutions are greatly interested.

David Basketter, a specialist in the field of in vitro allergy research, gave a lecture yesterday on the current state of developments in the field of animal-free skin sensitisation testing.