Roche Diagnostics has announced that its Xcelligence RTCA system is being used in the EU's Detective project to reduce animal testing.
The Detective (Detection of endpoints and biomarkers for repeated dose toxicity using in vitro systems) project aims to establish a screening pipeline of high content and high throughput, using classical functional genomics, proteomics and 'cellomics' technologies.
Ultimately, human biomarkers will be identified and characterised for use in cellular models using repeated dose in vitro testing, in particular for use in the field of cosmetics.
Animal experiments are no permitted for use in toxicology testing in the cosmetic industry.
Progress has been made in recent years to develop alternatives to in vivo toxicity tests for assessing the human safety of new products and product ingredients.
Current conditions do not, however, permit complete replacement of animal testing.
This is especially true for the testing of repeated dose effects - the effects of products and ingredients used repeatedly over longer periods of time.
The Xcelligence RTCA Cardio system will be used for real-time testing of effects in human cardiac cells for these studies.
In addition, human renal and hepatic cells will be tested using the Xcelligence RTCA SP instrument.
These Roche real-time cell analyser (RTCA) systems use label-free impedance readings to monitor cellular events in real time.
These systems can be used in a fully controlled environment for continuous monitoring for both short-term and long-term experiments.
