The EU’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has published a knowledge base of 300 non-animal models used for research on respiratory diseases and the development of drugs and therapies.
The freely available dataset and executive summary, was co-ordinated by the JRC's EU Reference Laboratory for alternatives to animal testing (EURL ECVAM) and screened 21,000 abstracts, selecting 284 publications that described the most representative and innovative models.
According to the JRC, it is expected that the knowledge base will be of particular use to Competent Authorities in EU Member States to support the process of project evaluation, to ensure the use of non-animal models and methods has been properly considered in research proposals.
"To our knowledge this is the first time that such advanced non-animal models used in biomedical sciences have been systematically collected and analysed", comments JRC scientist Laura Gribaldo.
The JRC's EURL ECVAM is also undertaking a series of studies to review non-animal models and methods in several other disease areas, including breast cancer, immune oncology, autoimmunity, cardiovascular disease, and immunogenicity of advanced medicinal products.