| on 09-03-2008 12:33 |
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Robots would allow a much higher frequency of tests
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US scientists are taking the first step towards testing potentially
hazardous chemicals on cells grown in a laboratory, without using live
animals.
Two government agencies are looking into the merits of using high-speed automated robots to carry out tests.
The long-term goal is to reduce the cost, time and
number of animals used in screening everything from pesticides to
household chemicals.
The move follows calls for scientists to rely less on animal studies.
Robots would be able to carry out hundreds of thousands of chemical tests a day to identify chemicals with toxic effects.
Details were published in the journal Science and
discussed at the annual meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston.
Faster and cheaper
Speaking in a live link-up, Dr Francis Collins, Director
of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National
Institute of Health (NIH), said high throughput screening might provide
a faster, cheaper method of testing environmental chemicals.
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Could we, in fact, instead of looking at a whole animal as our first line of analysis, look at individual cells?
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"Historically such toxicity has always been determined
by injecting chemicals into laboratory animals, watching to see if the
animals get sick, and then looking at their tissues under the
microscope," he explained.
"Although that approach has given us valuable
information, it is clearly quite expensive, it is time-consuming, it
uses animals in large numbers and it doesn't always predict which
chemicals will be harmful to humans."
Five-year programme
The research collaboration between the NIH and the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the potential to
revolutionise the way that toxic chemicals are identified, he said.
"Ultimately, what you are looking for is, does this compound do damage to cells?" said Dr Collins.
"So could we, in fact, instead of looking at a
whole animal as our first line of analysis, look at individual cells
from different organisms of different animals with different
concentrations of the compound?"
The five-year research programme will use high-speed automated screening robots developed during the human genome project.
This will allow them to complete over 10,000 screens on
cells and molecules in a single day compared with 10 to 100 studies a
year on rodent models.
Long-term approach
Samples of chemicals will be dropped onto dishes containing human or animal cells grown in the laboratory.
These will then be studied for signs of toxicity using a variety of biochemical and genetic tests.
The ultimate goal is to develop non-animal based testing
methods that are rigorous enough to be submitted for regulatory
approval.
Currently, more than 2,000 compounds are being studied for toxicological effects on rodent and human cells.
However, scientists say it will be many years before non animal-based tests become routine, if they prove successful at all.
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