Developing a global education hub for animal-free innovation

Abstract

In recent decades, the life sciences have witnessed remarkable advancements, leading to breakthroughs in medicine, agriculture, and environmental science. Although experiments on animals have been used on the way to making these advancements, the scientific community and society are increasingly questioning the scientific validity and ethics of using animals in research, testing, teaching, and training. Systematic reviews have shown that the translatability of results from animal studies to humans is often poor (Leenaars et al., 2019), and the use of animals in experiments is often termed “a black box” because the mechanisms at work are unclear. In addition, experiments using genetically homog-enous strains of animals do not reflect the interindividual differ-ences among patients. Diseases are often induced in experimental animals in an artificial way, for example by genetic modification or chemical insult, which means that the human etiology of the diseases is not accurately represented, hindering opportunities to identify avenues for prevention and treatment.