Towards a future beyond animal testing?

As spring fades into summer and nature bursts into full bloom, it is a fitting time to reflect on scientific approaches that promote innovation while advancing more ethical and sustainable research practices. This past spring was filled with events and initiatives that energized the research community and accelerated the development of forward-thinking solutions. Among them, New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) are emerging as powerful alternatives to traditional animal testing.What are NAMs exactly? How can they effectively be used in research? And what is the vision of regulatory bodies on that matter?…

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Zebrafish as a model to study the toxicity of different pesticides – a case study

Since 1974, World Environment Day has been celebrated every year on 5 June, so this month we want to acknowledge this event by reviewing a scientific article where zebrafish are used to test the toxicity of certain pesticides: Toxicity of Deltamethrin to Zebrafish Gonads Revealed by Cellular Biomarkers 1, published in Journal of Marine Science and Engineering on January 23th, 2020.This article investigates the chronic effects of deltamethrin, a synthetic insecticide extensively used in pest control, on gonads. For doing so, the authors of the mentioned article exposed zebrafish adults…

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Morphological and phenotypic characteristics of zebrafish embryos

In our modern world, development of new synthetic compounds and chemicals is essential for many industries, such as the pharmaceutical, clothing and food industries. This has become a major public and environmental issue as many of these compounds can be toxic and detrimental to human and animal health. In addition to these artificial toxins, chemicals can occur naturally in the environment such as heavy metals or nitrates. Although it is widely recognised that such compounds can cause damage to life, how harmful they are and how they cause disease needs…

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