Asked by: Michael Wheeler (Labour - Worsley and Eccles)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of recent developments in organ-on-chip technology on the generation of data on how organs react to potential new medicines.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government is committed to non-animal alternatives and will publish a strategy to support their development, validation and adoption later this year. While it is not yet possible to replace all animal use, we support approaches that replace, reduce and refine animal use in research, including organ-on-chip technologies. Data from alternative methods can support medicine development as part of clinical trial applications. The impact of individual technical advancements are however a matter for individual regulators to consider, and the Government strategy will help facilitate the inclusion and adoption of alternative methods in these regulatory contexts.
Asked by: Michael Wheeler (Labour - Worsley and Eccles)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment his Department has made of the potential implications for his policies of the Performance assessment and economic analysis of a human Liver-Chip for predictive toxicology study published in 2022 in Nature Communications Medicine.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government is committed to non-animal alternatives and will publish a strategy to support their development, validation and adoption later this year. While it is not yet possible to replace all animal use, we support approaches that replace, reduce and refine animal use in research, including human Liver-Chip models. The economic impact of individual technical advancements are to be defined as these technologies are utilised more widely by industry stakeholders in drug discovery and development. The Government strategy will help facilitate the inclusion, review and adoption of these types of validated alternative methods by regulators.
Asked by: Michael Wheeler (Labour - Worsley and Eccles)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether he has made an assessment of the potential implications for his policies on animal testing of the ability of (a) organ-on-chip, (b) artificial intelligence and (c) advanced use of human cells and tissues to provide human-relevant data on the effects of potential new medicines in whole biological systems.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government is committed to non-animal alternatives and will publish a strategy to support their development, validation and adoption later this year. While it is not yet possible to replace all animal use, we support approaches that replace, reduce and refine animal use in research, and provide human-relevant translatable data, including organ-on-chip, cell-based assays and AI. The impact of individual technical advancements are however a matter for individual regulators to consider, and the Government strategy will help facilitate the inclusion and adoption of alternative methods in these regulatory contexts.
Asked by: Michael Wheeler (Labour - Worsley and Eccles)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment his Department has made of the implications for his policies of the data collated in the Centre for Human Specific Research's Recombinant Antibodies and Mimetics Database on advancing studies in (a) disease mechanisms, (b) diagnostics and (c) therapeutics.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government is committed to the development of non-animal alternatives and will publish a strategy to support their development, validation and adoption later this year. Recombinant antibodies offer enhanced reliability, consistency, and specificity compared to traditional animal-derived antibodies, strengthening studies into disease mechanisms, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Resources like the Recombinant Antibodies and Mimetics Database from the Centre for Human Specific Research are important information sources to support their wider uptake. Further steps supporting alternative methods, including any targets to phase out specific applications of animal testing, will be outlined in the upcoming strategy.