Alternatives for animal testing | Communicating cancer genomics research |
Leiden reconstructed human epidermal model:
an alternative for animal testing
Abdoelwaheb El Ghalbzouri |
Marije Marsman
There is increasing public pressure to decrease
the testing on animals of products, raw materials, ingredients and drug candidates for safety, efficacy and research. In the EU animal testing for cosmetics
is partly banned this year, and a total ban is expected in 2013 if sufficient alternative are available.
This has triggered the development of in vitro alternatives and resulted in alternatives for simple safety tests. However,
in vitro models do not yet resemble human tissue closely enough to replace animal testing on
a much wider scale. In addition, the skin models generated today are skin models representing
a healthy phenotype.
Especially in the pharmaceutical industry, close resemblance to the corresponding human tissue will
be a crucial criterion for companies to switch to in vitro models. Furthermore, next to healthy skin, the generation of diseased skin models might open up new possibilities as screening model for novel therapeutics. In the area of skin models, LUMC offers a solution to this unmet need.
Extensive ongoing research has led to the development of one of the best characterized 3D skin models
(or human skin equivalents HSE). The model can be produced from primary keratinocytes, cell lines and patient grafts. Several other cell-types like melanocytes can be introduced in the model. The scientist can build models with only epidermal models or full thickness models.
A patent has been filed in 2008 describing a method to transfect the 3D skin model. This method allows the development of a high-throughput 3D skin model array.
Communicating cancer genomics research (in Dutch)
Annelies Speksnijder | Marc van Mil | Arend Jan Waarlo
Case study of the 'Kanker Genomics Markt Plaza'
on
28 March 2009 organised by the
Cancer Genomics
Centre in collaboration with KWF Kankerbestrijding
and the Nederlandse Federatie van Kankerpatiënten-organisaties (NFK)
Issues to be addressed during this interactive session are:
> Whom do you want to reach and why?
> How to attract 1,000 plus visitors?
> Which partners do you need?
> What formats are suitable for such a large scale event?
> How much does it cost and what is the overall off spin?
How can such an event serve as input for societal research
