Nanosensors Could Help Reduce Laboratory Animal Testing

cylonlover writes "Animal testing is an area that elicits strong feelings on both sides of the argument for and against the practice. Supporters like the British Royal Society argue that virtually every medical breakthrough of the 20th century involved the use of animals in some way, while opponents say that it is not only cruel, but actually impedes medical progress by using misleading animal models. Whatever side of the argument researchers fall on, most would likely use an alternative to animal testing if it existed. And an alternative that reduces the need for animal testing is just what Fraunhofer researchers hope their new sensor nanoparticles will be."

Re:Interesting development...

[Meeni]

This is indeed the proof that animal testing is necessary. It is goddamn expensive. Nobody does it for fun, or out of sheer cruelty. It costs money, and would be avoided if possible, for simple economical reasons.

Stupid personal story: my wife once bought a cosmetic that touted not being tested on animals. She got a severe rash using it... She now buys the one that are indeed tested on animals instead of customers.

Do any Gizmag editors understand science?

[nbauman]

This idea is decades old -- testing substances in tissue culture. The Frauenhofer guys have come up with an interesting improvement.

It will never replace most of the animal testing.

Researchers do tissue culture testing all the time. Then after the tissue culture tests, they have to see if it still works in the rats. Lots of times it doesn't. That's especially true with cancer treatments. There are lots of pathways in real animals, and they interfere with each other, particularly liver enzymes.

We cured cancer in tissue culture many times. Then they try to repeat it in animals and it doesn't work.

And lots of animal testing has nothing to do with activating a receptor. How can you send a tissue culture through a maze?
This is especially a problem for discovering harmful effects of consumer products.

another ATP ratiometric dye, yahoo

[golden age villain]

This article is completely misleading. What they developed is an ATP-dependent ratiometric dye. It is nice but it is not the first ratiometric dye. It is also not the first fluorescent ATP reporter. How will this stop scientists to use animals? It won't. It is just one more tool in an already vast existing array of tools to study cells using fluorescence imaging. This journalist is an idiot. Where are the cells going to come from? For most practical interesting cases, they are going to be "extracted" from animals. Also while ATP is indeed an important molecule, it is really naive to believe that monitoring ATP alone can tell you anything about the state of a cell, especially in vivo, except whether or not it has enough glucose and oxygen. If it was as simple as "expose them to the substance under investigation." to find something worthwhile, everybody would already do it using calcium reporters, NADH autofluorescence, glucose reporters or any other of the numerous similar tools already available on the market.