The Boston Globe’s Naomi Aoki wrote an article that is being widely circulated by animal rights and anti-animal rights advocates on the Internet. The article profiled Charles River Laboratories and gave the impression that the company is increasing its efforts at developing and marketing nonanimal tests. The only problem is that one of the most innovative “nonanimal” tests mentioned in the article, is in fact an animal test.
In January 2002, Charles River Laboratories bought a firm called DakDak which performs in vitro testing of sunscreen products. Using an innovative approach, the lab can perform testing of sunscreen products in a day or two that would take up to a year in in vivo models. But in vitro testing is not the same as nonanimal testing, although you would not know that from Aoki’s characterization of DakDak,
In the past five years, the lab animal portion of Charles River’s business has gone from 80 percent to 40 percent. Earlier this month, the firm bought a lab test, called DakDak, that allows researchers to measure how effectively sunscreens prevent skin damage. The test does in days what would take months in animal studies.
. . .
Studying them all [potential compouds] in animals is simply an economic impossibility. Animal tests can take months, even years, and quickly run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Charles River estimates that DakDak can test five or six products for less than half what it would cost to study one product in animals.
But DakDak’s technology is not nonanimal — and, at least in its press releases announcing the acquisition of DakDak, Charles River never claims that it is.
The in vitro test is based on research by skin cancer researchers Eric Bernstein and Jouni Uitto who filed a patent in 1997 for a line of transgenic mice that form the core of the DakDak technology.
Bernstein and Uitto gentically modified the mice so that they carry a promoter found in human beings that produces elastin when people are exposed to sunlight. In the transgenic mice, however, this promoter has been modified to produce an enzyme called CAT (chloramphenicol acetyltransferase).
When the transgenic mice are exposed to sunlight, the promoter kicks into gear and produces CAT. The amount of CAT produced can then be measured as a gauge of how effective a sunscreen product is in preventing exposures to UVB and UVA.
The in vitro model which Charles River Laboratories touts involves taking skin explants from the transgenic mice and exposing the explants to UVB/UVA.
Yes, this is an animal alternative to the extent that skin explants from animals are used rather than whole animals, but the entire process from start to finish is entirely dependent on transgenic mice. Whatever else it is, DakDak’s test is animal testing.
And yet the Boston Globe erroneously bills this sort of test as an example of companies “Evolving away from animal tests.” In case that was not clear enough, the editors added a subhead proclaiming that “Charles River Laboratories shifts to new technologies.”
It is these sort of articles which fuel the nonsensical claims by animal rights activists that animal testing is yesterday’s technology. Hey, Charles River Laboratories is using a sunscreen test that doesn’t use any animals, so why can’t we get rid of all animal testing?
Yes, Aoki includes comments from researchers to the effect that animal alternatives cannot replace animal studies completely, but the reality is that many “animal alternatives” are like this sunscreen test. They might reduce the number of animals killed and return results far faster using in vitro technologies, but they still rely heavily on animals.
Source:
Evolving away from animal tests: Charles River Laboratories shifts to new technologies. Naomi Aoki, Boston Globe, February 27, 2002.
In vivo and in vitro model of cutaneous photoaging (U.S. Patent 6,018,098). PharmCast.Com.
Charles River Acquires ‘In Vitro’ Technology Platform. Charles River Laboratories, Press Release, January 14, 2002.
Cat And Mouse Model Human Skin Aging. The Scientist, 12[9]:31, April 27, 1998.