Good News for Consumers, Toxicologists and Animals; 10-Year Multicenter Study Proves Cell Culture Tests More Accurate than Lethal Animal Tests in Predicting Toxicity.

Ekwall, chairman of the Cytotoxicology Laboratory (CTLU), based in Sweden, today reported conclusive proof that an inexpensive battery of cell culture tests is considerably more accurate in measuring and understanding toxicity than are the animal tests currently used. Dr. Ekwall's announcement came at the 17th Scandinavian Society of Cell Toxicity (SSCT) In Vitro Toxicology Workshop in Rostanga, Sweden.
Dr. Ekwall is an internationally recognized authority on developing a more scientifically sound, in vitro (non-animal) approach to toxicity testing. The new toxicity test uses cell cultures instead of animals. It was evaluated in a 10-year, multicenter study involving 29 laboratories in 15 countries, including the USA, Japan, Canada, Mexico, England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Nordic countries and Russia. According to Dr. Ekwall, US agencies (ICCVAM) are now validating the in vitro test as a possible replacement for tests such as the LD50 in which the animals studied often experience prolonged suffering and painful deaths.
Major early funders of Dr. Ekwall's research include the Boston-based New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS) and the American Fund for Alternatives to Animal Research (AFAAR), based in New York City. "We consider the nearly $200,000 in funding we have provided for Dr. Ekwall's studies since 1985 to be money well spent," said Dr. Theodora Capaldo, President and Executive Director of NEAVS. "At NEAVS, our mission is to end animal experimentation. Dr. Ekwall has proven that animal experimentation is not only painful and lethal to animals, it is flawed and misleading> science," she said.
The average consumer comes in contact with thousands of chemicals, used in all sectors of modern society, Dr. Ekwall said. He added that these chemicals are routinely safety-tested on living animals without anesthesia. "This causes hideous suffering for the animals, he said.
"Prediction of human lethal and toxic doses is poor due to species differences between animals and humans, and the toxic mechanisms of the chemicals cannot be directly predicted using current animal tests," Dr. Ekwall noted. "In fact, the predictive accuracy of the LD50 tests on rats and mice has been estimated by us to be only 60 and 65% respectively," he said. However, the non-animal tests developed by Dr. Ekwall's group, using human cell line cultures, is 75% accurate in predicting human lethal toxicity. This is the first time an acute toxicity test with a distinctly better performance than traditional animal tests has> appeared, Dr. Ekwall said.
According to Dr. Ekwall, "Using animals to assess the risk of acute human chemical poisoning has shortcomings. Results are given only as a toxic dose, which is simply a gross measurement of several different events. The test can point out toxic symptoms, but cannot directly point out toxic mechanisms.
"So, not only do these non-animal tests have a higher precision than traditional tests, the main advantage of this approach is improved understanding of toxic events," Dr. Ekwall said.
The results of the multicenter study also were reported in the latest (August-October, 1999) issue of Toxicology In Vitro.

Contact: CTLU Bjoern Ekwall, MD, PhD
Chairman SSCT +46-498-492259 bjoern.ekwall@ctlu.se
Scandinavian Society of Cell Toxicology website:
www.ctlu.se/SSCT.html or New England
Anti-Vivisection Society Theodora Capaldo, EdD
President 617-523-6020 tcapaldo@aol.com