Professor Carl Borrebaeck of the Department of Immunotechnology and CREATE Health, a Strategic Center for Translational Cancer Research, has, as an expert scientist member of the EU Reference Laboratory for Alternatives to Animal Testing reviewed the scientific validity of non-animal-derived antibodies and non antibody affinity reagents used for research, regulatory applications and diagnostics. The results of these evaluations have now been published in a set of high profile papers for instance in Nature, Nature Methods and Nature Biotechnology. It is concluded that "neither the scientific nor ethical shortcomings of animal-derived antibodies need be tolerated any longer in the interest of a three-Rs principle for antibody production: rapid, reliable and reproducible science". Laboratory methodology that does not require antibodies made in animals are now in place. These advances allow for development of applications and assays based on "animal-free" antibodies, tools that preferentially should be used in reproducible, high quality science.

For further reading please review this information on "Better antibodies without using animals" on the EU Science HUB.

References:

Eskes et al. (2020) On the Scientific validity of replacements for animal-derived antibodies. (Recommendations provided by the Publications Office of the European Union)

Clewell et al (2020) ESAC working group report on the scientific validity of replacements for animal-derived antibodies. (Recommendations provided by the Publications Office of the European Union)

Gray et al. (2020) Animal-derived-antibody generation faces strict reform in accordance with European Union policy on animal use. Nat Methods 17, 755–756.

Gray et al. (2020) Reproducibility: bypass animals for antibody production. Nature 581, 262.

Gray et al. (2020) Animal-free alternatives and the antibody iceberg. Nat Biotechnol (in press)