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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences
Non-Animal Methodologies Within Biomedical Research And Toxicity Testing, Andrew Knight
Non-Animal Methodologies Within Biomedical Research And Toxicity Testing, Andrew Knight
Andrew Knight, PhD
Laboratory animal models are limited by scientific constraints on human applicability, and increasing regulatory restrictions, driven by social concerns. Reliance on laboratory animals also incurs marked – and in some cases, prohibitive – logistical challenges, within high-throughput chemical testing programmes, such as those currently underway within Europe and the US. However, a range of non-animal methodologies is available within biomedical research and toxicity testing. These include: mechanisms to enhance the sharing and assessment of existing data prior to conducting further studies, and physicochemical evaluation and computerised modelling, including the use of structure-activity relationships and expert systems. Minimally-sentient animals from lower …
The Future Of Teratology Research Is In Vitro, Jarrod Bailey, Andrew Knight, Jonathan Balcombe
The Future Of Teratology Research Is In Vitro, Jarrod Bailey, Andrew Knight, Jonathan Balcombe
Andrew Knight, PhD
Birth defects induced by maternal exposure to exogenous agents during pregnancy are preventable, if the agents themselves can be identified and avoided. Billions of dollars and manhours have been dedicated to animal-based discovery and characterisation methods over decades. We show here, via a comprehensive systematic review and analysis of this data, that these methods constitute questionable science and pose a hazard to humans. Mean positive and negative predictivities barely exceed 50%; discordance among the species used is substantial; reliable extrapolation from animal data to humans is impossible, and virtually all known human teratogens have so far been identified in spite …