Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment his Department has made of the potential implications for his policies of the Performance assessment and economic analysis of a human Liver-Chip for predictive toxicology study published in 2022 in Nature Communications Medicine.

The Government is committed to non-animal alternatives and will publish a strategy to support their development, validation and adoption later this year. While it is not yet possible to replace all animal use, we support approaches that replace, reduce and refine animal use in research, including human Liver-Chip models. The economic impact of individual technical advancements are to be defined as these technologies are utilised more widely by industry stakeholders in drug discovery and development. The Government strategy will help facilitate the inclusion, review and adoption of these types of validated alternative methods by regulators.