New Dutch group reinforces efforts to replace animal testing

By Christoph Schwaiger | EURACTIV


Three Dutch research institutions have teamed up to create a steering group to collaborate more intensively in the field of animal research and animal-free innovations.

While the Netherlands is one of the highest users of animals for scientific purposes in the EU, 77% of its citizens believe more should be done to accelerate the full replacement of animal experiments, according to a poll released last year.

Animal testing in the EU has been on the decline, from 8.8 million animals in 2018 to 7.9 million in 2020. Nevertheless, the expectation that global chemical production will double by 2030 has different stakeholders urging the EU to move faster on replacing animal testing.

Now, a new Dutch steering group, Amsterdam 4R, established in November, wants to join in these efforts while going an extra step to emphasise the reproducibility of stem-cell-derived models.

“We added a fourth R to emphasise that it is essential to reproduce the main features of a specific cell, tissue or organ in stem-cell-derived models,” Amsterdam 4R chairperson Jolanda van der Velden told Euractiv.

The European Partnership for Alternative Approaches to Animal Testing (EPAA), for example, works towards the replacement, reduction, and refinement of animal testing methods. This is known as the 3R principle. Amsterdam 4R, as its name implies, added another principle to this list – reproducibility.

Van der Velden said that while stem cell research advances quickly, the group felt that reproducibility of stem-cell-derived models is an often overlooked aspect in the field of animal-free medical innovations.

According to the professor, if reproducibility is not taken into account properly, new animal-free models will not provide the essential information that is needed for testing toxicity and drug effectiveness. Further funding is needed to perform such research and secure the reproducibility of newly developed innovative stem-cell-derived models.

Van der Velden is also a professor of physiology at the Amsterdam University Medical Center, which joined forces with the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Academic Centre for Dentistry in Amsterdam (ACTA) to create the Amsterdam 4R steering group.

The group was launched last November to allow for more intensive collaboration in the field of animal research and animal-free innovations.

In a statement announcing the group’s establishment, van der Velden said that while the partners still think it’s important to show the outside world why animal research is still necessary, it’s equally important to show society the latest developments and innovations in animal-free research.

She expects that such a partnership will allow for more effective and efficient collaboration between the different stakeholders.
New drugs can be tested on cultured heart tissue

The individuals involved in this new collaboration have already started making progress in the field, including van der Velden herself, who is testing the culturing of patients’ heart muscle tissue removed during surgery.

Van der Velden told Euractiv that the tissue slices can be kept in culture for many weeks and allow researchers to study the effectiveness of newly developed drugs to repair cardiac function, such as ones that target the metabolism of heart muscle cells.

Additionally, the toxicity of cancer medication can also be defined in these human cardiac tissue slices.

“We thereby make optimal use of [excess human material collected during surgery], and at the same time reduce the need for such experiments in animals,” van der Velden said.

The steering group also aims to increase the visibility of all 3R-related activities in Amsterdam. It also wants to be transparent about the research performed on animals and train the next generation of scientists in this area.

In previous years, many scientists in Amsterdam have developed experimental models, both animal- and stem-cell-derived, that better reflect human pathophysiology, and they developed models to reduce and refine research in animals.
Still years away from completely replacing animals

However, these initiatives were very much at an individual and departmental level, according to van der Velden.

Thanks to Amsterdam 4R, an overview of all initiatives in the Dutch capital can be formed, allowing researchers and students to discover the state-of-the-art expertise that’s available. As the next generation of scientists is nurtured, current university courses can be expanded and optimised.

One hurdle researchers still face is the complexity of certain diseases, which could involve more than just a single organ. Other factors such as hormones, the immune system, and a person’s diet could also come into play, which all make it more challenging to model complex human diseases.

“While major advancements have been made, we emphasise that it will still take many years and a lot of money to build reproducible experimental models that can replace the research in animals,” van der Velden said.

[By Christoph Schwaiger, Edited by Vasiliki Angouridi/Zoran Radosavljevic | Euractiv.com]