News on non-animal methods
JANUARY 26 - 30, 2026
NEWS, REPORTS & POSITION STATEMENTS
1. Challenges and opportunities for human OOC in FDA assessments and pharma pipelines
The US Food and Drug Administration recently announced a plan to phase out animal-testing requirements for drug assessments based on advances in New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), including human organ-on-a-chip (OOC) microfluidic culture technology. Although OOC are being explored in many pharmaceutical laboratories, they have not yet been integrated into drug development pipelines.
In a recent article, Prof. Donald Ingber, Founding Director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, reviewed challenges that must be overcome to bridge this gap and new opportunities that will emerge. He also discussed additional work that will be required for OOC to reduce animal use, lower drug costs, meet regulatory goals, and improve clinical success in the future.
2. ReadyAI: Advancing the implementation of AI into CRA
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into chemical risk assessment (CRA) is emerging as a powerful approach to enhance the interpretation of complex toxicological data and accelerate safety evaluations. However, the regulatory uptake of AI remains limited due to concerns about transparency, explainability, and trustworthiness.
The European Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC) project ReadyAI was established to address these challenges by developing a readiness scoring system to evaluate the maturity and regulatory applicability of AI-based models in CRA. The project unites a multidisciplinary consortium (academic, regulatory, and legal experts) to define transparent and reproducible criteria encompassing data curation, model development, validation, explainability, and uncertainty quantification. Current efforts focus on identifying key priorities, including harmonized terminology, rigorous data quality standards, case studies, and targeted training of regulatory scientists.
INTERVIEWS, NOMINATIONS & AWARDS
3. 2026 Society of Toxicology Awards
SOT Enhancement of Animal Welfare Award: Pr. Mathieu Vinken
This highly respected award from the Society of Toxicology (SOT) recognizes outstanding contributions to advancing toxicological science through methods that replace, reduce, or refine animal use – the core principles of the 3Rs. Prof. Mathieu Vinken, of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and coordinator of the ONTOX project, received this 2026 award for his pioneering work in human-relevant liver toxicology, his leadership in developing integrated NAMs, and his long-standing commitment to animal-free safety assessment of chemicals.
SOT Achievement Award: Dr. Katie Paul Friedman
This award recognizes a SOT member who has made significant contributions to toxicology within 15 years of obtaining the highest earned degree. Katie Paul Friedman of UL Research Institutes received the 2026 Achievement Award for her leadership in computational toxicology and her contributions to NAMs that are transforming chemical safety assessment
Throughout her career, Dr. Paul Friedman has led influential efforts to develop, apply, and build confidence in NAMs for regulatory decision-making. At the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), she played a central role in the ToxCast program. She has been the lead investigator for the Toxicity Reference Database (ToxRefDB). Her research has advanced endocrine and developmental neurotoxicity testing.
4. CAAT Deputy Director ITW: Cracking the code of everyday chemical exposure with AI
Mapping the human exposome — all the chemicals people are exposed to during their lifetime — depends on identifying thousands of unknown molecules found in the human body. By combining AI-driven techniques with mass spectrometry, researchers are uncovering hidden links between environmental exposures and human health with greater accuracy than ever before.
In a new paper, Johns Hopkins researchers reviewed current scientific literature on how AI-driven retention time prediction works, especially how AI and machine learning are being used to make these predictions more accurate. Check out the Q&A between CAAT Deputy Director Fenna Sillé and Danielle Underferth of Johns Hopkins University, who dives into this intriguing topic.
TOOLS, PLATFORMS, CALLS
5. ARDF opens 2026 Annual Open Program
The Alternatives Research & Development Foundation (ARDF) announced that the 2026 Annual Open Grant program is now accepting applications. The Annual Open program funds research to develop alternative methods that replace or reduce the use of animals in research. Proposals are invited from any nongovernmental, nonprofit educational or research institution around the world and across the broad range of scientific areas related to alternatives research.
Applicants must submit a letter of intent (LOI) prior to submitting a full application. The deadline for LOI submission is February 20, 2026. Applicants who are invited to submit a full application (after the LOI phase) should plan to submit full applications by May 25, 2026. The maximum award amount is $50,000 for a one-year research project.
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INDUSTRY, BIOTECH & PARTNERSHIPS
6. Lantern Pharma: AI Center of excellence in India to accelerate development opportunities with biopharma companies
Lantern Pharma Inc., a pioneer in AI-driven precision oncology and computational therapeutic development, announced the establishment of an AI Center of Excellence and Advanced Agentic Labs in Bengaluru, India.
This strategic initiative represents a critical inflection point in Lantern’s evolution, transitioning from pioneering AI-enabled drug discovery in cancer to industrializing those capabilities at global scale for the broader drug development community. “We have reached a defining inflection point where artificial intelligence, genomic science, and clinical data are converging to fundamentally transform drug discovery…”, Dr. Vijay Chandru, BOD Member, Lantern Pharma.
7. Eli Lilly Makes its AI models available to biotech sector
Eli Lilly is making its AI/ML platform, TuneLab, broadly accessible through an integration with San-Francisco based Benchling, bringing models trained on over $1 billion worth of proprietary research data into the hands of more than 1,300 biotech companies. The collaboration is a response to the longstanding limitations in AI model training across life sciences, particularly lack of high-quality data and secure infrastructure for model deployment.
TuneLab, first launched in September 2025, is Lilly’s federated learning platform for early-stage drug discovery, offering access to AI models trained on proprietary preclinical, safety, and molecular datasets, including ADME, toxicology, and PK/PD profiles from hundreds of thousands of compounds. Full access to TuneLab within Benchling is expected to roll out later in 2026.
8. The largest open dataset for Virtual Cell Modeling by Tahoe, Arc Institute, and Biohub
Tahoe Therapeutics (formerly Vevo), Arc Institute, and CZI’s Biohub have announced a joint initiative to generate what is reportedly the largest and most perturbation-rich single-cell dataset available for virtual cell model development.The dataset will comprise over 120 million single-cell profiles and 225,000 drug – patient perturbation interactions and will be released open source as part of a shared open science commitment.
The collaboration merges Tahoe’s Mosaic platform with Arc’s scBaseCount and Biohub’s CELLxGENE datasets, extending previous efforts that have powered foundational AI models such as STATE, Tahoe-x1, and TranscriptFormer. The new dataset is expected to be more than four times richer in perturbation diversity than Tahoe-100M, a 2025 release that has seen over 250,000 downloads and broad adoption for model training and benchmarking.
SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES & PROTOCOLS
9. Integration of in silico tools, mechanistic in vitro NAM, and toxicological data: A case study with benzoic acid
Benzoic acid and its derivatives are widely used as preservatives in cosmetic and food products. A new study quantitatively assesses the suitability of benzoic acid-related substances for read-across within a Next Generation Risk Assessment (NGRA) framework, aimed at defining a Point of Departure (POD) for the chemical class.
Using in silico read-across approaches, researchers delineated sub-groups within the broader benzoic acid derivative category, further refined by metabolism and reactivity data to characterise the class boundaries. Pharmacological profiling, ToxCast, and transcriptomics confirmed the low bioactivity of benzoic acid analogues and identified compounds outside the defined class exhibiting distinct reactivity profiles. This case study illustrates a structured approach combining in silico, mechanistic, and toxicological data to define POD for chemical classes of low systemic toxicity.
Read the publication in the NAM Journal
10. Vascularised brain organoids: Engineering strategies and neurobiological applications
One major limitation of conventional brain organoids is their lack of vascular structures. This deficiency restricts organoid size, contributes to necrotic core formation, and hampers their functional maturation.
In a recent review, researchers explored how vascularization enhances the structural and physiological relevance of brain organoids and its growing significance in disease modelling and therapeutic screening. Examining current methodologies for engineering vascularized brain organoids (vBOs), the researchers also discussed current limitations, highlighted innovative approaches, including the use of next-generation biomaterials and dynamic perfusion technologies, and new opportunities for neuroscience research, drug development, and regenerative medicine.
Read the publication in Cell Proliferation
11. Vascularized human retinal organoids: Retinal ganglion cell survival and functional maturation
Retinal organoids are widely used to model human retinal development and disease, but their utility is limited by the absence of vascular networks and stable axonal projections, which contribute to retinal ganglion cell degeneration and loss of function. To address these challenges, researchers incorporated stem cell-derived endothelial cells to induce transient vascular-like networks and used microfluidic devices to stabilize axonal growth.
The resulting organoids showed reduced hypoxia, increased size, and decreased apoptosis, indicating improved long-term survival and maturation of retinal ganglion cells. Integration with microfluidic-microelectrode arrays enabled stable recordings of spontaneous and optogenetically evoked activity, which persisted beyond the time when control organoids lost function.
Read the publication in Cell Stem Cell
12. A human tumor-immune organoid model of glioblastoma
A major obstacle to identifying effective therapies for the aggressive brain tumor glioblastoma is the lack of human-specific, immunocompetent models that reflect the human tumor microenvironment. To address this, researchers from the University of California (UCLA) developed the immune-human organoid tumor transplantation (iHOTT) model, an autologous co-culture platform that integrates patient-derived tumor cells and matched peripheral blood mononuclear cells within human cortical organoids.
This platform preserves tumor and immune populations, immune signaling, and cell-cell interactions observed in patient tumors. Treatment of iHOTT with pembrolizumab, a checkpoint inhibitor, mirrors cell-type shifts and cell-cell interactions observed in patients. Their findings establish iHOTT as a physiologically relevant platform for exploring autologous tumor-immune interactions and underscore the need for antigen-targeted strategies to enhance immunotherapy in glioblastoma.
Read the publication in Cell Reports
