Use of New Approach Methodologies in Education, Toxicology and Biomedical Science: Biodiversity Conservation and Business Opportunities

Russell and Burch’s Humane Experimental Techniques, published in 1959, provoked a huge response so that animal use in education, research, and testing has come to be severely criticized from the perspective of cruelty to animals and loss of biodiversity. The variety of animals used in huge numbers in dissections, cytology, and physiology, in the manner practiced in the developing countries, has been connected to biodiversity loss as revealed in the case of frogs, lizards, insects, etc., warranting legal protection of several species. Thus, animal use in dissection, physiology, and pharmacology in India is banned and replaced by digital learning, an aspect of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), saving millions of animals in the wild. This has contributed to the conservation of biodiversity. Importantly, digital would mean business. The use of animals in experimentation in the contexts of toxicology and biomedical sciences, with the ultimate goals of (i) finding the toxic inflictions of chemicals to humans, and (ii) drug discovery and vaccine testing, is in scanner. Here, where the concept of alternatives has been expanded with the more recent approach of New Approach Methods (NAMs) which encompass in vitro (cell-based assays: 2D culture, 3D culture, organoids, organs-on-chip, human-on-chip, microphysiological systems, etc.), computational/in silico tools, in chemico techniques, model organisms of lesser sentience (zebra fish, Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila, etc.) and the high-throughput testing or omics technologies, which not only save biodiversity but improve precision. The new technologies further facilitate commercial ventures of large-scale production and supply of advanced in vitro, in silico, and in chemico tools and alternative model organisms. There are projections of a clear hike in business ventures associated with cell-based assays.