The European Pharmacopeia Commission has decided to replace the histamine sensitisation test (HIST) with mice using a cell cluster assay to test residual pertussis pathogens in vaccines. The new assay will be used from the beginning of the next year.

An international working group of regulators and industry from the European Union, Brazil, Canada, Japan and United States has outlined nine overarching principles that underpin the integration of novel methods and data for the safety assessment of cosmetic ingredients. This is in line with a general shift in toxicology from testing in whole organisms as a “black box” towards understanding the mechanisms behind adverse effects, allowing for a more informed and targeted evaluation of chemicals.

Doctors Against Animal Experiments awards this prize for outstanding, innovative scientific work using animal-free, human-based methods for the research and therapy of human diseases which make a significant contribution to medical progress.

Scientists from Luxembourg, France and the Netherlands recently presented the Virtual Metabolic Human database in the journal Nucleic Acids Research. The database summarises current knowledge about human metabolism in five interconnected resources. It also describes how the human and intestinal microbial metabolism can be linked to nutrition and disease.