The National Institute of Standards and Technology recently announced researchers developed a new technique for testing skin allergies that may be less expensive and more effective than animal testing while retaining the same level of performance.
According to a May 17 NIST release, the outcomes of this new method were shown to be 77% similar to those who utilized animal testing utilizing the 4-nitrobenzenethiol and pyridoxylamine molecules.
“The two molecules are like surrogates for the amino acids cysteine and lysine," Elijah Petersen, a NIST research scientist and lead author of the paper state, "If a test compound binds to NBT and PDA, it is likely to also bind to the proteins in the skin, which is the first step of many adverse reactions.”
Animal-free allergy testing may be closer than previously believed, and the approaches used by NIST researchers may pave the way for the standardization of animal-free processes, the release reported. Additionally, this discovery could boost global trade and help decrease animal experimentation globally.
According to the news release, this is significant because several countries and states have already placed restrictions on the importation of skin goods that were tested on animals. Several other countries, however, still require animal testing prior to importation, despite the fact that animal-free testing procedures have been available for some time, due to the high cost and slower pace of animal-free testing.
“This study could support testing of commercial products, because we're going to have a really good method that's cheaper, faster, better quality,” Petersen said in the release. “I think it could also help raise the quality of in vitro test systems in general if people adopt our approach of adding extensive process controls.”
