Experts suggest alternative models to animal experiments

Visakhapatnam: Replacing animal testing with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning could help minimise the need for animals in scientific discovery, said GITAM Institute of Pharmacy Dean P Rama Rao here on Friday.

He delivered a lecture in the regional training programme for Committee for Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CCSEA) organised by the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying.

Addressing the participants, he said that around 20 million animal subjects are used in biomedical research in the world but use of animals in research has been called into question by the scientific community due to concerns about their clinical validity and application and ethical issues.

He pointed out that new medicines need not be tested in animals to receive US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval, according to legislation signed by President Joe Biden in December last which turned out to be a major shift away from animal use after more than eight decades of drug safety regulation.

He said that use of AI technology in the development of toxicity prediction models is a new concept that will aid in achieving a scientific acord and meet regulatory applications. With the enormous progress made within the realm of artificial intelligence (AI) and its application in fields such as medicine and chemistry, he added.

As part of the training programme, the organisers conducted an interactive session with Institutional Animals Ethics Committees (IAEC) and distributed certificates.