Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what discussions his Department has had with regulators on supporting the uptake of human-specific technologies to replace the use of animals in the preclinical testing of new medicines.

The Government is committed to the uptake and development of alternative methods to the use of animals in science. We are engaging with regulators including the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and international medicines regulators such as the United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) as to how we will take this commitment forward.

Government support for alternative methods includes human specific technologies such as organoids and organs-on-chips. The National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) provides major funding for one of Europe’s largest organ-on-a-chip facilities at Queen Mary University.