An amendment to the New Drugs and Clinical Trial Rules (2023), recently passed by the Government of India, aims to replace the use of animals in research, especially in drug testing. The amendment authorises researchers to instead use non-animal and human-relevant methods, including technologies like 3D organoids, organs-on-chip, and advanced computational methods, to test the safety and efficacy of new drugs.
Current drug-development pipeline
Every drug in the market goes through a long journey of tests, each designed to check whether it can treat the disease for which it was created and whether it has any unintended harmful effects. For a long time, the first step of this process has been to test the candidate molecule in at least two animal species: a rodent (mouse or rat) and a non-rodent, such as canines and primates.
