While the animal research industry continues to breed, buy, cage, torture, and kill sentient beings, progressive scientists are busy proving that human-relevant science is not only possible but, in fact, better for us all. Highlights in science from the last month are below.
Research without lab animals? New tech is making it possible
Avery Elizabeth Hurt, ScienceNewsExplores, 6/5/2025
“Advances in artificial intelligence, or AI, have been helping reduce a need for animals in some studies. This doesn’t mean AI is doing the science. Instead, scientists can use AI to speed up or replace steps in their work. Kleinstreuer describes it as ‘augmented AI.’”
“In one study, an AI model screened 190,000 chemicals to assess toxicity. It was 87 percent accurate, the researchers reported. And it performed better than repeated animal testing.”
“AI may even be able to stand in for some lab animals. In one 2023 study, researchers wanted to predict whether drugs might cause side effects, such as liver damage. They used AI that had been trained on data from past drug studies that had used more than 8,000 rats. They also gave this AI data on the drugs’ chemical structures. Then the researchers asked the AI to predict how rats would respond to three similar new drugs. AI needed no living organisms, just 100,000 virtual rats. And its predictions almost perfectly matched the responses researchers got in tests with real rats. In the future, AI may be used to predict drug side effects in people or the best dose to use.” 📰 Full Story →
AI Cracks Secret Language of Sticky Proteins Linked to Alzheimer’s
Center for Genomic Regulation, SciTechDaily, 6/6/2025
“A new AI tool has made significant progress in decoding the biochemical ‘language’ that determines whether proteins form sticky clumps, structures associated with Alzheimer’s disease and roughly fifty other human disorders.”
“In its current form, CANYA primarily explains protein aggregation in yes or no terms, i.e. it works as a so-called ‘classifier.’ The researchers next want to refine the system so it can predict and compare aggregation speeds rather than just aggregation likelihood. This could help predict which protein variants form clumps quickly and which do so more slowly, a vital factor in neurodegenerative diseases where the timing of amyloid formation matters just as much as the fact that it happens at all.”
“‘This project is a great example of how combining large-scale data generation with AI can accelerate research. It’s also a very cost-effective method to generate data,’….” 📰 Full Story →
Angel investment group pours 750k in Glasgow cancer research
Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco, The Herald, 6/12/2025
“Glasgow-based biotech company ScreenIn3D has developed a unique ‘lab-on-a-chip’ system which makes it possible for drug developers to test scores of cancer treatments on patient-derived tumour samples. A more accurate alternative to traditional animal testing, it is hoped that the technology will ‘dramatically’ speed up the development of cancer treatments.” 📰 Full Story →
Cultured Mini-Organs Expose Aggressive Bacteria Weapons
Uppsala University, Mirage, 6/12/2025
“Thanks to lab-grown miniature intestines, researchers at Uppsala University have successfully mapped how aggressive Shigella bacteria infect the human gut. The study opens the door to using cultured human mini-organs to investigate a wide range of other serious infections.”
“Understanding how human-specific bacteria make us sick is challenging, as laboratory animals rarely reflect human physiology . . . ‘For the first time we have been able to map the genes Shigella needs to cause infection using a human model that mimics intestinal tissue. The study also demonstrates that cultured human mini-organs can now be used to investigate a variety of serious infections, particularly those for which the lack of laboratory animal models has previously limited research,’….” 📰 Full Story →
Scaling 3D biology: Automation, imaging, and the future of high-throughput research
Molecular Devices UK Ltd, Medical Life Sciences, 6/12/2025
“One of the biggest challenges in drug discovery is the high failure rate of drug candidates in clinical trials—approximately 90 percent fail. This is largely due to the limitations of 2D cell cultures and animal models, which often do not accurately replicate the complexity of human tissues. In contrast, organoids and other 3D models better mimic human biology, offering more predictive platforms for drug screening, toxicity assessment, and disease modeling.”
“ . . . advances in automation, high-content imaging, and machine learned-based analysis are helping to overcome [challenges to the “broader adoption” of organoids] . . . Automation plays a crucial role in overcoming the challenges associated with organoid research by simplifying workflows and improving reproducibility, scalability, and overall efficiency . . . Automated organoid workflows have significantly advanced research in several key areas…”, including cancer research, neurodegenerative disease modeling, cardiotoxicity screening, and pharmaceutical toxicity. 📰 Full Story →
Practicing medicine on a lifelike silicone model of cerebral vasculature
Deborah Kyburz, Medical Xpress, 6/16/2025
“An ETH spin-off, Swiss Vascular, has developed anatomically exact silicone models of cerebral vessels. Through this development, researchers will not only reduce the amount of animal experimentation required but also improve the standard of medical training for complex medical procedures.”
“Thanks to Swiss Vascular’s silicone models, it is possible to practice procedures and test medical devices, thereby reducing the amount of subsequent animal experimentation required.” 📰 Full Story →
WHO and NTU to create lab-based safety tests to replace animal testing for novel foods
Shabana Begum, The Straits Times, 6/18/2025
“The World Health Organisation (WHO) has teamed up with Nanyang Technological University (NTU) to find new, faster ways to test for the safety of novel foods and reduce the use of animal testing. This includes placing human liver and intestinal tissues on a device to recreate how key organs will respond to newly developed foods like cell-based meats and microbes.”
“Once NTU has optimised the food safety methods, it will work with WHO to standardise these methods globally and help it establish a regulatory framework for future foods.” 📰 Full Story →
VeriSIM delivering predictive insights to advance and de-risk drug development
Melane Sampson, BioTuesdays, 6/24/2025
“‘With my background in both veterinary and human health, animal testing has never sat well with me. We create synthetic diseases in animals that live in highly controlled environments—unlike the complexities of real human conditions,’ she contends. ‘Animal testing has not really changed in more than a century. This year, the FDA announced plans to phase it out in large molecule testing—and for good reason. It’s expensive and often poorly translatable to humans due to inherent biological differences.’”
“Dr. Varshney believes a better way forward is combining computational modeling with biology, ‘where biology remains the first principle and driver over the AI piece.’ To achieve meaningful scale and impact across diverse patient populations and drug types, Dr. Varshney says she needed to go big and that resulted in the formulation of VeriSIM Life. ‘I wanted to solve this challenge of how we look at translatability between non-clinical and clinical trials and make it better, more efficient, and safer so more drugs are successful.’” 📰 Full Story →
Lab-Grown Mini-Hearts with Blood Vessels Mark Major Advances in Human-Specific Medical Research
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, 6/25/2025
“Scientists have overcome a major hurdle in organoid research by successfully growing mini-hearts and mini-livers with blood vessels”, “enabling more realistic growth and function of the human heart and liver, possibly paving the way to similar advances in other organs.”
“This development will propel the study of human biology, including heart and liver issues, early embryonic development, and the effects of drug exposure on human organs—while also supporting advances in personalized medicine.” 📰 Full Story →
Milestone: Lab-grown mini-brain given epilepsy drug learns in real time
Bronwyn Thompson, New Atlas, 6/26/2025
“For the first time, a lab-grown brain-computer system has demonstrated that human neurons living and evolving in an artificial system respond to medication by learning, in real time, in a game-like environment.”
“‘This breakthrough is a major step forward in not only how we study and understand diseases and drugs that are designed to treat related neural processes impacted by these diseases,’ . . . ‘For the first time, alongside some of the world’s most eminent researchers in their field, we’ve been able to show that impaired information processes of a disease in a dish can be restored using a drug designed specifically to treat it.’” 📰 Full Story →
Can 3D printers help find a cure for cancer?
Sara Bauman, McGill University, 6/30/2025
“ . . . the biggest hurdle to developing effective cancer medicines is the reliance on outdated testing methods, primarily animal testing and 2D cell cultures. These practices simply don’t replicate the complexity of human tumours and fail to account for the myriad factors that affect how a tumour grows and responds to treatments.”
“Using 3D bioprinting (think 3D printing, but with bioink), TissueTinker creates complex, miniaturized models that replicate healthy and diseased tissues side by side. The team has mastered spatial control over where cells are placed, creating models that mimic the way tumours develop in the body . . . Not only has TissueTinker achieved the optimal size for their tumours to balance cost and accuracy, but the tumours can also be customized based on the desired research question.”
“‘We’re not just solving a problem; we’re rethinking the way we approach cancer drug development,’ said Ringler. After a centuries-long fight against cancer, the battle enters a new era reimagined with living models and smart research design.” 📰 Full Story →
Take Action: Show Your “CARE” for Animals
The Cold-blooded Animal Research and Exhibition (CARE) Act (H.R. 2976) aims to amend the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) to finally include cold-blooded animals in its definition of “animal.” That means, if passed, the CARE Act would bring tens of millions of sentient beings — including fish, one of the most commonly used animals in labs — under the purview of federal law. ⚠️ Take Action Now →
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