15,000 rats and mice will be spared each year now that pharmaceutical companies have axed toxicity testing.

Thousands fewer rodents will be used in tests to develop new medicines following an extensive review of testing procedures by European researchers and 18 pharmaceutical companies.

The ‘acute toxicity test’, which can cause substantial effects to animals, is now redundant – leading to a 70% reduction in animal use by the companies involved.

The cut equates to around 3.5% of the total rats and mice used in testing new human or veterinary medicines or dentistry products – a total of around 15,000 animals each year.

The research has been coordinated by the UK’s National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research. According to the Centre, the toxicity test is usually conducted prior to the first clinical trial in humans, and is traditionally required to identify the dose of a medicine that causes major toxic effects.

The leader of the review, Dr Sally Robinson of Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, said: “Appropriate safety testing with animals is a worldwide regulatory requirement, providing protection to the public and providing doctors with important information on how to administer new medicines.

“In light of our desire to replace, refine and reduce animal use wherever possible, we were keen to examine whether there was a better way to conduct this type of test… While we recognise that this reduction represents a small proportion of the total, it is an important step in the right direction.”

Other companies backing the scrapping of the test include Roche, Pfizer, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline.

By Natasha Piscitelli