Animal activists have all the right to be optimistic about the future especially when it comes to animal testing. The National Institute of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency announced that they would launch a study on the use of robotic machinery to do toxicological studies at various levels of exposure instead of using live animals.

The study involves the use of human cells and the machinery to be used to monitor cell death is sensitive even at minute levels of the toxin. The study will benefit from the database collected in the National Toxicology Program and will probably start with the various concentrations of over 2,500 toxic chemicals in the inventory. This will greatly diminish the number of animals being used in such tests. But, a number of researchers are still skeptical whether there can be a time when animal testing becomes obsolete.

Both agencies are banking on the advances in sensor technology, faster microprocessors and the database amassed by the toxicology program to develop more robust in vitro toxicity testing protocols. And since the procedures will use mammalian tissues, it will be a lot easier to extrapolate dosages and thresholds. Many in the pharmaceutical industry believe that while there is no substitute for animal testing, the plan of automating toxicity testing will drastically reduce the number and kinds of animals to be used in future product testing. And since there is the possibility of using human tissues in the tests, these results would be immediately applicable in diagnosis.

<em>Reference:www.contracostatimes.com</em>