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POSITIVE STEPS TO REDUCE ANIMAL TESTING

  POSITIVE STEPS TO REDUCE ANIMAL TESTING
   

Animal testing has long been considered the gold standard for environmental toxicology, but animal testing takes a long time and entails the death of animals to acquire data. Even more, the results cannot always extrapolate to humans.
In order to reduce the number of animals used in experiments without jeopardizing medical research the FRAME-(Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments) laboratory will try to grow human tissue cultures in which drugs can be tested.

Using Biochips instead of Animals for Testing-
A new biochip technology could vastly reduce animal testing in the cosmetics and other chemical industries ,as well as reduce its use in the development of new pharmaceuticals.when biochips are used together the result is promising and affordable alternative to animal based toxicology screening and a direct route to developing safe, effective drugs.  
Thus, the research team views the combined chips as an efficient, more accurate way to test drug compounds for human toxicity earlier in the discovery process.
Biochip-
A biochip is a collection of miniaturized test sites (micro arrays) arranged on a solid substrate that permits many tests to be performed at the same time in order to achieve higher out put and speed.
(Micro array-the dense 2 dimensional grid of biosensors is the critical component of a biochip platform.)
A biochip is made up of more than 1000 human cell cultures suspended in a special 3-dimensional gel and utilized on a slide to be viewed under the microscope; an individual cell culture can investigate if a special chemical is toxic to humans.
Typically, a biochip surface area is no larger than a fingernail. Like a computer chip that can perform millions of mathematical operation in one second, a biochip can perform thousands of biological reaction. Such as decoding genes, in a few seconds.
Extending the use of a biochip-
Even more exciting news about the biochip is that scientists can add in other kinds of cells. In this way, a researcher could add in a lung cell for instance, which would thus check if the chemical is toxic to lungs. This new technology now allows for scientist to asses the toxicity of a chemical on multiple organs, rather than just skin alone.  
Positive steps to reduce animal testing-
While this new biochips is not yet a complete replacement for animal testing. It is an exciting and positive step in the right direction for the chemical industry and pharmaceutical .ultimately; it pulls us a bit closer to finding a way to replace animals in laboratory testing. Biochips also carry other benefits such as reasonable cost rapid output and of course, it does not require the use of animals for testing.