UK Government Announces £22 Million Investment In Animal Testing Alternatives

The UK government has announced a £22 million investment to “ramp up” the move away from animal testing in favor of “cutting-edge” alternatives.

This includes a £20 million center to grow miniature organs from human tissue, and £2 million from the government’s Innovate UK for nine projects including lab-grown ear models, AI modeling, and “beating heart cells in a dish.”

Read more: Oregon To Transition Its Primate Research Center Towards Human-Based Research

The Department for Business, Innovation, Science, and Trade (BIST) and Chris McDonald, the Minister of State and Minister for Science, Innovation, and Investment, announced the investment in a statement earlier this month.

McDonald said, “Today marks another significant step forward in the UK’s move away from animal testing in science and research.”

The proposed pre-clinical Translational Models Hub will build and share models of human tissue grown from NHS patients to test new treatments. The government said that the hub will accelerate development of testing on “organoids,” which are effectively small, simplified versions of the human gut, brain, or a tumor.

“This is all about backing our world-leading researchers and innovators to improve lives, giving them the tools they need to deliver more effective treatments for horrendous diseases like cancer, while also preventing the need for animal testing wherever possible,” McDonald continued. “It’s also a boost for our life sciences sector – with British firms using samples donated by real people and harnessing AI to predict how a medicine behaves – fuelling opportunities for new investment and new jobs, and ensuring Britain is better off.”

£2 million for cutting-edge animal testing alternatives

The £2 million from Innovate UK will support the following companies, institutions, and projects: Biofoundry Energy Ltd, a platform that aims to reduce dedicated cardiovascular safety studies that use dogs and primates; BiomimX Srl, which is developing a miniature model of living human heart tissue; CamGene Therapeutics Ltd, which is developing ear models that improve hearing loss without animal studies; CN Bio Innovations Ltd, which is developing “human-relevant” models and simulations to predict how drugs will behave; Ioteach Ltd, which is developing an AI platform that predicts how medicines will move through the human body; InoCardia Ltd, a feasibility study for replacing dog and monkey cardiovascular drug safety studies; Nanograb Ltd, another AI platform to predict lipid nanoparticle pharmacokinetics and biodistribution based on formulation data; VivoSphere UK Ltd, a feasibility study that uses lab-grown human heart tissues to predict drug side effects; and the University of Nottingham, which is developing a statistical analysis tool that uses lab data to create simulation-based pharmaceutical safety predictions.

The Government has said that it will publish a delivery update on the Replacing Animals in Science Strategy and a set of KPIs before the end of the year. 

Read more: This Scientist Just Created A ‘Virtual Mouse’ To Replace Animal Testing

‘It’s all very exciting’

In July, the Home Office revealed an overall decrease in animal testing of just four percent from 2024 to 2025, and an increase in the use of dogs, cats, horses, and monkeys. Many animal tests are conducted despite the existence of approved alternatives, and approximately 2.54 million procedures took place in the UK last year.

Furthermore, over 90 percent of the drugs that clear animal testing fail during human trials, supporting the argument that they are inefficient, expensive, and cruel.

Juliet Dukes, the research manager at Replacing Animal Research, told the Guardian, “One of the huge advantages of organoids, organs-on-a-chip and other in vitro microphysiological systems is that, unlike animal models, they have real potential to deliver the promise of truly personalised medicine for individual patients.

“It is all very exciting.”

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