This time, two prestigious research awards from the Center for Alternative to Animal Testing (CAAT) at the Bloomberg School of Medicine in Baltimore go to two German teams for their commitment to non-animal methods.

Hamburg: In vitro researcher to hold 3Rs chair

Wednesday, 18 January 2023 10:42

Biomedical scientist Prof. Maike Frye takes over the chair on 3R methods at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE). With her Vascular Biology group, the scientist is developing novel hydrogel techniques for culture systems of human cells. The aim is to recreate tissue environments of vascular endothelial cells. 

At the end of December 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the "FDA Modernization Act 2.0." Under this law, it is no longer necessary to test the safety of drugs on animals in order to obtain approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the government agency that oversees food, drugs, and medical devices. This could initiate a significant reduction in animal testing after more than 80 years of safety testing of drugs on animals.

A team from Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden as well as from Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) is using an organ-on-a-chip to explore the possibilities of fighting persistent tumors with the help of radioactive substances.

Rare muscle disease in the petri dish

Wednesday, 21 December 2022 13:43

Researchers from Göttingen have developed skeletal muscles from human stem cells in their laboratory. The goal is to be able to test the efficacy of drugs without animal testing.

Newsletter December 2022

Monday, 19 December 2022 11:28

When hungry: cell switches metabolism to fat

Friday, 16 December 2022 11:00

A team led by Prof. Volker Haucke and Dr. Wonyul Jang at the Leibniz Research Institute for Molecular Pharmacology (FMP) has discovered a previously unknown mechanism by which different compartments in the cell communicate with each other in such a way that cell metabolism is converted depending on the food supply.

Using three different cell cultures, a French research team has investigated the harmful effects that can be triggered by endocrine disruptors. The focus was particularly on the "apoptosis receptor" P2X7.

Using intestinal organoids, scientists at the University of Zurich have observed that alcohol ethoxylate, a chemical commonly found in commercial dishwashing detergents, can damage the human intestinal epithelium.

An international research team involving toxicologists from Constance and Düsseldorf has developed a test battery with human cells that can put an end to animal tests to detect neurotoxic substances.