Medical Research Techniques

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

That is a wide-ranging question, and I will do my best to cover some of those points. With respect to the effectiveness of clinical trials, on the whole they cannot take place without toxicology trials and most of those, sadly, have to be done on animals. We very much welcome any technology that allows for in silico methods of assessing toxicology and it is true that more of those are emerging, but they have to be validated in order to be assumed safe and usable in clinical trials.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, the Government produced a previous report on a road map for non-animal technologies from six UK government funders, including MRC, EPSRC and Innovate UK way back in 2015. How will they ensure that this new road map does not get left on the shelf again? Will DSIT set up an independent strategic advisory board with the key stakeholders to provide direction and oversight, as suggested by the RSPCA?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

DSIT continues to be led on its approach to creating non-animal methods in clinical trials, toxicology trials and so on by the UK’s NC3Rs—the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research—for toxicology and other scientific research, and that continues. There was a decrease of 10% in animal testing from the previous year, according to our most recent records, and that will continue. DSIT meanwhile has no plans to add a new oversight executive body to those already in existence.