In close succession to the FDA news on April 10th to reduce animal testing in drug development, the NIH subsequently announced their plans to reduce the use of animals in NIH-funded research on April 29th.
“Ushering in a new era of innovation”, the NIH’s press release acknowledges that human-based research technologies “offer unique strengths that, when used correctly or in combination (with animals), can expand the toolbox for researchers to answer previously difficult or unanswerable biomedical research questions.”
The NIH plans to establish the Office of Research Innovation, Validation, and Application (ORIVA) to:
➡️ Coordinate efforts to develop, validate, and scale non-animal approaches across the agency
➡️Serve as a hub for interagency coordination and regulatory translation for public health protection.
➡️Expand funding and training in non-animal approaches and awareness of their value in translational success.
➡️Expand infrastructure to make non-animal approaches more accessible to researchers.
➡️Publicly report on research spending to measure progress toward reduced funding for animal studies and increased funding for human-based approaches.
View the full press release here: NIH to prioritize human-based research technologies | National Institutes of Health (NIH)
At CN Bio, we’ve spent over a decade developing and optimizing our PhysioMimix® OOC Systems and solutions, to better mimic human biology in the lab. These recent announcements affirm a transformative shift toward tools, such as OOC, which enable better predictivity and clinical translatability.