13th Oct 2015 07:21
LONDON (Alliance News) - Cyprotex PLC on Tuesday said it will form part of the EU-ToxRisk consortium funded by the European Commission to develop new testing methods aimed at moving away from animal testing, which will be worth around EUR1.0 million to the company over six years.
The preclinical discovery and development contract research organisation said the EU-ToxRisk consortium will comprise of 39 partners, who will share the total value of the six-year programme of EUR30.0 million, of which Cyprotex will get around EUR1.0 million.
The consortium is funded through the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 programme for Research and Innovation.
The aim of the project is to develop new human relevant in vitro non-animal methods and in silico computational technologies for the early assessment of potential toxicity in humans.
"The ultimate goal is to provide the basis of future regulatory chemical safety testing using animal-free approaches for hazard and risk assessment. Cyprotex plays a major role in the delivery of absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion data to the consortium and will also be involved in validation of some of the newly developed toxicity models," it said.
"Animal testing is notoriously poor at predicting human safety for certain types of toxicity and awareness of the ethical issues associated with animal testing is growing rapidly. Developing more sophisticated human relevant models will help in addressing these issues, as well as improving the speed and efficiently of screening," added Chief Executive Anthony Baxter.
Cyprotex shares were down 1.9% to 63.25 pence per share on Tuesday morning.
By Joshua Warner; [email protected]; @JoshAlliance
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