A centre for promoting alternatives to animal experiments in drug development would be established here under a collaboration between the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and the Humane Society International (HSI) India.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was exchanged on April 25 by the Atal Incubation Centre of the CCMB and HSI India, a non-governmental organisation, to launch the Centre for Predictive Human Model Systems. This MoU is about working with industry, working with the Humane Society to find alternative model system for "drug discovery", CCMB Director Rakesh Mishra told reporters.

"Right now, we use animals. Now, we are developing technologies where we can use alternative human models, taking cells from human, making organoids and testing them directly," he said. This would not only improve the drug discovery process in terms of speed and finances but also provide better drugs "which we may be losing during testing at the animal level...

So, this is a very futuristic, expected big activity in the future," Mishra said. "What we have signed today, is to look at alternatives to animals that can be used for testing medicines and various things for human purposes," Madhusudana Rao, CEO of AIC, said.

The motto of the Centre is to break silos and forge partnerships among the scientific community, regulatory stakeholders and members of the industry. "This will enable a better transfer and sharing of knowledge, higher support for advanced research and open access publication of literature," a media release on the event said.

Among other functions, the centre would develop as a scientific and policy think-tank to represent the growing body on advanced, non-animal science on a scientific and policy level, it said. Replying to a query on the legal position on the issue, HSI's N G Jayasimha said the law says that one needs to use wherever an alternative to animals existed.

Asked if the pharma companies can do away with animal testing, he said that was the vision of the endeavour. The AIC is an entity formed by the CCMB to promote start-up activities in life sciences.