More than 60 percent of investigational drugs fail in human clinical trials due to a lack of effectiveness, despite promising pre-clinical studies using cell and animal research models. For this resason, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are now promoting 13 research projects that have failed to prove effective. The has approved a two-year funding programme totalling $ 15 million per year.

With the help of a cell culture model consisting of patients' tumor cells, scientists from the cluster of excellence BIOSS Centre for Biological Signalling Studies at the University of Freiburg and the Freiburg University Medical Center have tested a new inhibitor which could be effective against a bad breast cancer prognosis.

The Journal Applied In Vitro Toxicology is going to launch a special Issue on "Implementing Alternative Approaches for Inhalation Toxicity Testing". Deadline for manuscript submission is December 15, 2017.

A team of scientists in the department Experimental Toxicology and Ecology at BASF SE in Ludwigshafen, Germany, has refined a method for detecting substances that can trigger allergic skin reactions. This allows the intensity of a substance’s skin-sensitizing effect to be predicted. This is important for assessing not only chemicals’ skin-sensitizing effects (H317) according to the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS), but also their potency (sub-categories 1A and 1B).