FDA Joins UK, EU Push to Phase Out Animal Drug Tests — SkimNews
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- FDA published a five-year roadmap in April 2025 to reduce animal testing in drug-safety studies, and NIH stopped requiring animal models for many of its grants — the firmest US policy backing yet for alternatives.
- The United Kingdom launched a plan late last year to phase out animal testing, and the European Union followed in June, building on the EU's 2013 ban on animal testing for cosmetics.
- Donald Ingber's liver-on-a-chip at Harvard identified nearly 7 of 8 drugs that proved toxic in clinical trials despite appearing safe in animal tests; the chip is in final stages of FDA approval and has replaced primates in Moderna's mRNA vaccine safety screening.
- Hans Clevers' team at Utrecht University developed a squamous cell carcinoma antibody entirely in organoids with no conventional animal testing; the drug is now in Phase III clinical trials.
- More than 90% of experimental drugs that appear safe in animals never reach regulatory approval, largely because they prove toxic to humans — driving the shift to organoids, organs-on-chips, and AI models.
- Public support is eroding: fewer than half of Americans in 2025 found medical testing on animals morally acceptable, down from a majority in 2001, while UK support held at about two-thirds in its 2018 survey.
Why it matters: This matters because more than 90% of drugs that pass animal tests fail in humans due to toxicity — a failure rate driving pharmaceutical companies to adopt non-animal methods like Ingber's late-stage FDA liver-chip. With public tolerance falling and regulators in three major economies moving in tandem, drug developers face mounting pressure to retool safety pipelines.
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