India’s national regulator for biomedical research, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), has recommended fast-tracking investments in technologies that can replace animal testing, following calls from an influential medical journal to transition drug toxicity and efficacy trials away from animals.

The call follows the publication of a paper on 12 August in Volume 149, Issue 5 of the Indian Journal of Medical Research (IJMR), by a senior team of researchers representing the ICMR. Led by Soumya Swaminathan, deputy director-general at the World Health Organization and former director of the ICMR, the paper’s authors said that alternative technologies would be more ethical and humane but also more cost-effective than animal testing. The team suggested that emerging technologies that model “complex human physiology—such as organoids and organs-on-a-chip, which are laboratory-grown versions of human tissues—are starting to rival, and in some cases outperform, animals in their ability to model human disease . . .” (Nature)

Alokparna Sengupta, managing director of the Indian chapter of Humane Society International, noted: “This is the first time that an important government agency has publicly spoken about the need for alternatives to animals in research. The need to replace animals in laboratories is not only an ethical issue but one critical to the advancement of medical research and to India’s technological and economic competitiveness on the global stage.” (The Times of India)

The ICMR had set up a committee to consider alternatives to animal testing in 2017, with Swaminathan advocating centers of research and investment in funds, as well as building global scientific alliances, to develop alternative technologies. (International Business Times)

A month after the IJMR’s article’s publication, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the US announced an ambitious plan to end cruel and unnecessary animal testing by 2035 on September 10. This was a milestone in a long process of lobbying by politicians, journalists, and activists since the enactment of the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976. The EPA’s administrator, Andrew Wheeler—who has supported the Trump administration’s rollback of environmental regulations and a former lobbyist for the coal industry—“described the directive as a continuation of efforts that accelerated in 2016, under the Obama administration, when the Toxic Substances Control Act was amended to require the EPA to reduce its reliance on animal testing.” (The Washington Post)