News

Dr Elias Zerhouni, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH: the world’s largest supporter of medical research) from 2002-2008, laments that researchers have over-relied on animal data, saying:

“The problem is that it hasn’t worked, and it’s time we stopped dancing around the problem…We need to refocus and adapt new methodologies for use in humans to understand disease biology in humans.”

Ref: http://nihrecord.od.nih.gov/newsletters/2013/06_21_2013/story1.htm

Dr Francis Collins, current NIH Director, has frequently criticised animal testing for being expensive, time consuming and unreliable. He says:

“With earlier and more rigorous target validation in human tissues, it may be justifiable to skip the animal model assessment of efficacy altogether.”

Ref: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/3/90/90cm17.full

Our US Science Director, Dr Katya Tsaioun, has been selected to serve as a member of the Center for Scientific Review for the US National Institutes of Health. This immensely prestigious appointment is in recognition of Katya’s expertise and achievements, and will make a valuable contribution to medical research in the field of drug discovery for the nervous system. Katya is a highly-regarded expert on in vitro methods in drug development and is the founder of Apredica and Pharma Launcher. 

A further great honour for us is that Katya will be presenting a poster at the prestigious Gordon Research Conference on Cellular & Molecular Mechanisms of Toxicity from August 11-16. The poster will outline Safer Medicines Trust’s groundbreaking proposal to compare the relative abilities of animal tests and human-based in vitro tests to predict the safety of medicines.

A new paper published by Expert Opinion on Drug Metabolism & Toxicology:

“Advances in the development and use of human tissue-based techniques for drug toxicity testing”

explains that:

• Human tissues have a vital role to play in drug toxicity evaluation.

• For many toxicity issues, the reliability of animal models is so poor that the greater relevance of human tissues offers invaluable advantages.

Read more here

“For decades, mice have been the species of choice in the study of human diseases. But now, researchers report evidence that the mouse model has been totally misleading for at least three major killers – sepsis, burns and trauma. As a result, years and billions of dollars have been wasted following false leads, they say.”

“They are so ingrained in trying to cure mice that they forget we are trying to cure humans.”

“It argues strongly – go to the patients. Get their cells. Get their tissues whenever you can.”

See more…

In an editorial entitled: “Of men, not mice”, the journal Nature Medicine commented:

“Although the message that mice are an imperfect model for human disease is far from new, these recent results should prompt some soul-searching among disease researchers… Rather than overrelying on animal models to understand what happens in humans, isn’t it time to embrace the human ‘model’ to move forward?”

See more… 

The UK medicines regulator, the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) appears to be out of step with global scientific opinion that better methods are needed to improve the safety of new medicines. Although current methods include computer models and in vitro tests, they rely mainly on tests in animals.

Despite global calls to modernise safety testing, the MHRA insists that animal tests are irreplaceable and is extraordinarily dismissive of two of the most exciting breakthroughs: microdosing and ‘body on chip’ devices, saying that they are “not superior technologies”.

Please write to them – see more…

With 160 MP signatures, our Early Day Motion (EDM 475) calling for safer medicines was among the most-signed 1% of over 3,000 EDMs in the 2010-12 session of parliament.

This was the 3rd time our EDM had been in the top 1% – previous motions in 2005-06 and 2008-09 attracted 250 and 243 signatures, respectively. Clearly, there is phenomenal parliamentary support for the modernisation of drug safety testing that we are calling for.

Thank you so much to all of you who contacted your MPs – you really made a difference.

See more…

Read our latest newsletter here (pdf)

Predictably, the pro-animal-research lobby attacked our open letter to the Prime Minister and Health Secretary with a response published in The Lancet on 9th July.

We are very pleased that our response to such a false and ill-informed attack was published in The Lancet on 28th October.

Veteran politician Tony Benn joined actors Mat Fraser and Carol Royle, plus Green MP Dr Caroline Lucas, to present a 15,000 signature petition to Number 10 Downing Street. The Safer Medicines patrons, alongside other MPs, including David Amess (Conservative), Dr Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat) and Grahame Morris (Labour), are calling for superior new tests based on human biology to be compared with the animal tests currently used to assess the safety of new medicines.

View the presentation here. 

Safer Medicines Trust joined forces with 21 senior scientists to call on the Prime Minister and Health Secretary to compare animal tests for drug safety with newer tests based on human biology. Our letter was published in the world’s leading medical journal, The Lancet, here.

Sky News covered the story with an excellent report, available here and an interview with Safer Medicines Trust director Kathy Archibald.

The Daily Mail also reported on the story, here.

Kathy Archibald, Director of Safer Medicines Campaign and Safer Medicines Trust, was interviewed live on the Politics Show on Sunday 26th September (East Midlands region). You can watch the programme here, with kind permission of the BBC.

Read our latest newsletter here (pdf)

Safer Medicines Trust’s Science Director, Dr Margaret Clotworthy, was interviewed for Edge TV’s “On the Edge” programme on 18th March, 2010.

Read our latest newsletter here (pdf)

Read the report in the journal Alternatives To Laboratory Animals (ATLA) here

Jo Swinson MP has tabled EDM 212: Access to human tissue for health research, calling on the Government to increase the accessibility of human tissue samples for health research.

This is another very important initiative. Please ask your MP to sign EDM 212, as well as EDM 29.

You can view the signatories here. You can find the name of your MP here.

On 20th October, Professor the Lord McColl, shadow Spokesperson for Health, hosted a conference entitled:
Human tissues are invaluable for medical research – how can we make them more available?

You can play all the presentations and hear the Radio 4 interviews here

“That this House believes the safety of medicines should be established by the most reliable methods available in order to reduce the large and increasing toll of serious adverse drug reactions and calls upon the Government to initiate an unprecedented comparison of currently required animal tests with a set of human biology-based tests, as required by the Safety of Medicines (Evaluation) Bill 2009, to see which is the most effective means to predict the safety of medicines for patients.”

Very many thanks to everyone who encouraged their MP to sign – you helped to achieve a truly remarkable demonstration of support in favour of such a momentous evaluation: EDM 569 was the joint 10th most-signed of all 2,421 EDMs in the last parliamentary session!

Dr Bob Spink MP has re-tabled the Safety of Medicines Early Day Motion in this new parliamentary session as EDM 29. Please write to your own MP to ask them to sign EDM 29: Safety of Medicines – taking the opportunity to thank them if they signed EDM 569 in the last session.