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.
Tech Talk Q&A: Why virtual twins are the next big step for cosmetics and personal care manufacturers and suppliers
Cassandra Stern, Cosmetics Design USA, 5/1/2025
“From reducing animal testing to optimizing ingredient sourcing, virtual twin technology has the potential to unlock faster product innovation and a smarter supply chain for beauty industry stakeholders.”
“ . . . virtual twin technology can help manufacturers and suppliers test formulates faster, validate product claims, manage risk, and enhance operational efficiency, ultimately better navigating the complexities of a competitive landscape . . . cosmetics firms are adopting virtual skin twins to replace animal testing.” 📰 Full Story →
OpenAI and the FDA Are Holding Talks About Using AI In Drug Evaluation
Zoe Schiffer, Emily Mullin, & Will Knight, WIRED, 5/7/2025
“The Food and Drug Administration has been meeting with OpenAI to discuss the agency’s use of AI, according to sources with knowledge of the meetings. The meetings appear to be part of a broader effort at the FDA to use this technology to speed up the drug approval process.”
“‘Why does it take over 10 years for a new drug to come to market?’ wrote FDA commissioner Marty Makary on X . . . ‘Why are we not modernized with AI and other things? We’ve just completed our first AI-assisted scientific review for a product and that’s just the beginning.” 📰 Full Story →
Revolutionising Toxicology: What You Need to Know About Aerosol Testing
Raeesa S., About Insider, 5/13/2025
“Traditionally, [toxicology] has relied on animal testing to assess the potential harm of substances. However, advances in science and growing ethical concerns have accelerated a shift toward more sophisticated, humane, and accurate alternatives. One of the most exciting developments in this evolution is aerosol testing — a technique that’s redefining how we assess the safety of inhaled substances.”
“Historically, inhalation toxicology studies have involved exposing lab animals to aerosolized compounds, then observing the effects”, but “[m]odern aerosol testing often uses in vitro methods, which involve studying cells or tissues in a controlled lab environment outside a living organism. One of the biggest breakthroughs in this space is the development of 3D lung models — lab-grown systems that closely mimic the architecture and function of human lung tissue. These models enable researchers to study how aerosol particles behave when they come into contact with human airways.” 📰 Full Story →
VivoSim’s NAMKind™ Intestine Wins Blue Ribbon Award at Digestive Disease Week Conference
Globe Newswire, Stock Titan, 5/13/2025
VivoSim Labs’ NAMkind™ platform showcased “a robust, multicellular in vitro model that closely mirrors human intestinal biology, paving the way for safer and more effective therapies for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).”
“By leveraging AI-based computational modeling, human organ model-based lab testing, VivoSim is delivering on the promise of this technology, and will use its proprietary methods and cutting-edge capabilities for NAMkind™ models that displace use of animals and provide superior outcomes for its pharmaceutical customers, ultimately delivering better solutions for patients.” 📰 Full Story →
Scientists increase complexity of tissue models, providing an alternative to using animals in science
Queen Mary University of London, Phys.org, 5/13/2025
“Bioengineers at Queen Mary University of London have taken a significant step forward in the development of laboratory-based models of human tissues that may be used as alternatives to animal testing.”
“The group develops organ-on-a-chip technology in which human cells are grown in tiny plastic ‘chips’ to mimic the biology of tissues found in the body. In their latest research [] the team describes new methods to increase the complexity of these models, making them even more like human tissues . . . What makes this breakthrough especially exciting is that the new methods work across a range of different human tissues and different commercial platforms. This means that the research can be used to help scientists understand disease processes and test new therapies across a wide range of human diseases, without the use of animals, which often poorly predict human biology.” 📰 Full Story →
How Mini-organs Can Replace Animal Testing
Mirage, 5/23/2025
“Researchers are getting better at growing miniature organs and embryos in test tubes or on chips. This creates new opportunities for answering research questions while reducing the need for animal testing in some cases.”
“Ivan Nalvarte researches Alzheimer’s disease at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet. In his lab in the BioClinicum building, he cultivates human brain cells in small dishes . . . These small cell clusters are commonly referred to as mini-brains in popular science contexts. In the research world they are called cerebral organoids. For the past decade or so, they have been used worldwide, sometimes as an alternative to laboratory animals, to answer research questions about brain development, brain diseases or how the brain is affected by toxins or drugs. Similarly, organoids resembling other organs, such as lungs, liver and intestines, are used in other research.”
“‘I realised that mouse models were not very suitable for us. Sex hormones affect the brain differently in humans and mice,’ he says . . . Compared to laboratory animals, organoids are smaller, easier to handle, cheaper, more like humans, and a faster way to results. Another important reason for Ivan Nalvarte is that experiments on organoids is preferable for ethical reasons.” 📰 Full Story →
Artificial Tissue-Handling Microchips Developed by Hungarian Researchers Could Replace Animal Testing in Drug Evaluation
Hungarian Research Network, 5/26/2025
“As part of a major international consortium, Hungarian researchers are working to develop microchip-based artificial tissues that mimic human organs. In the future, experiments conducted on patient-derived samples could enable faster and safer drug testing.”
“The 51-member European consortium, led by the German company Microfluidic Chipshop GmbH, aims to develop Organ-on-Chip technology that will not only enable controlled drug testing but also support the understanding of disease pathophysiology. In the future, the tissue-mimicking devices developed within the UNLOOC project could facilitate faster and safer drug testing by analysing samples from individual patients. In the longer term, the results achieved may also support the personalised design of pharmacotherapeutic protocols, representing a direct extension and translation of the project.” 📰 Full Story →
Vivodyne to Replace Animal Testing With $40 Million Funding to Reverse 95% Clinical Trial Failure Rate
BioSpace, 5/29/2025
“Biopharmaceutical companies routinely cure diseases in animals during preclinical testing, yet those same therapies fail in human clinical trials nearly 95% of the time. By shifting from animals to an exclusively human optimization preclinical process, Vivodyne has raised $40 million in new Series A financing to scale its robotics+AI approach to testing on thousands of lab-grown, fully-functional human tissues, and the massive amount of human data they generate.”
“While animal models share proteins and pathways with humans, their similarities to human disease are often surface-deep, undermining their predictive power. Vivodyne enables large-scale clinical testing on lab-grown human tissues that can recapitulate the complexity of human disease, leading to more accurate results. This enables pharmaceutical companies to leverage these fully functional tissues across the entire preclinical pipeline, from initial target discovery through clinical candidate selection through safety and efficacy testing, significantly improving success rates in human trials. This has the potential to accelerate drug discovery by replacing largely unreliable, slow-growing animal models with vast, unified datasets of human tissue responses.” 📰 Full Story →
Innovative 3D Melanoma Skin Models Improve Preclinical Research
Dibash Kumar Das, Oncology Times, 5/30/2025
“New advancements in 3D human melanoma skin models provide a promising alternative to traditional animal testing and 2D culture systems . . . full-thickness melanoma models, characterized using bioimaging and RNA sequencing, closely mimic human skin structure and tumor behavior, making them valuable tools for melanoma research and drug development.”
“Traditional 2D cell cultures and animal models fail to replicate the complexity of the tumor microenvironment found in human skin”, while the “full-thickness melanoma models successfully replicated key features of human skin….” 📰 Full Story →
Take Action: Support the CARGO Act to Stop Funding Animal Experiments Abroad
If the CARGO Act passes, it will mean no more American-taxpayer-funded animal torture in labs elsewhere in the world. ⚠️ Take Action Now →
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