A combo act featuring a slate of top European companies and clinical research organizations are bringing a close to an 80-year era of animal tests for acute toxicity. Since 1927 drug researchers have cut short the lives of countless rats and mice to determine a drug's toxicity. But new methods that don't depend on rodents are better and a lot less time consuming. That's a victory--the first big one--for the UK's National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research. Regulators around the world say they have no objection to removing this step in drug development, paving the way to a wider rollout of the new approach. Researchers say this first step is likely to save the lives of some 15,000 rodents.    

- check out the report [1] from the Financial Times
- read the report [2] from the Wall Street Journal

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