The Humane Science Foundation is an independent charity organization to stimulate and promote humane science : putting patients first, replacing animal testing, progressing medicines research to its next frontier.
OUR FOCUS : PATIENTS
OPTIMAL DRUG DEVELOPMENT, DRUG REGIMES AND HEALTH ASSESSMENT METHODS
FOR VULNERABLE OR DISREGARDED
PATIENTS AND PATIENT GROUPS
Current practice in drug research focuses in most of the cases on anything but the individual patient. In drug research, medicines are developed and tested on animals, on healthy men between 20-40, and finally on far too large groups of patients, thus neglecting individual differences among patients.
The Humane Science Foundation develops better health assessment methods targeted on vulnerable patient groups or disregarded patients as women, babies, children, pregnant women and elderly. Furthermore the focus is on patients with a chronic illness, multiple diseases, multiple drug regimes, innate dysfunctions or inborn malformations, and personal drug sensitivities.
OUR FOCUS : ANIMALS
REPLACEMENT OF ANIMAL TESTING
Current practice in drug research still uses far too many animals, whereas the number of irrelevant and needless experiments is far too high as well. Estimates quote over 100 million animals a year worldwide. Dogs, cat, mice, rats, rabbits, horses, pigs, birds, fish, reptiles, monkeys- all species are used in animal testing. In the Netherlands over 500.000 animals are used in animal experiments each year. Besides, yearly another 500.000 animals are killed because they are no longer useful for animal experiments. Laboratory animals tremendously suffer: in the Netherlands over 65% (reference 1) of laboratory animals are being used in experiments without sedation, nor anaesthetics.
In addition, patients do scarcely or not benefit from the results of animal experiments.
In fact,
animal reactions to drugs often enormously differ from human reactions to
drugs. No surprise, as human beings are largely different from animals. For instance,
the immune system of animals and humans are much unlike. Monkeys will not develop
fatal AIDS while infected with HIV-like viruses, whereas humans do. Female mice will
not go into menopause, women do.
The Humane Science Foundation works on new innovative models and methods for medicine development without the use of animal experiments. Nowadays, suffering of animals has become unnecessary as new science and technology are opening ways to replace animal experiments.
Thus patient’s safety and the efficacy of drugs will be improved by replacing animal models with novel models and methods, which are directly targeted to compute human reactions to medicines. The Humane Science Foundation works on the development of these animal-free models and methods. To this purpose, the Humane Science Foundation promotes innovative, patient-focused animal-free drug development through three programmes: Research, Innovation, Education.
RESEARCH PROGRAMME
Science and technology has all the potential to preview and monitor effects of drugs on patient groups or individual patients. Newest tools and technologies as knowledge generation or data mining provide these insights and could propose the best personal drug regime for each patient. Research is needed to replace the current framework and to realize the perspectives.
INNOVATION PROGRAMME
Scientists need easy to use instruments and computer models. Easy input of data. Clear and unambiguous interpretation of the results. Straight reports to be read and approved by safety authorities. These innovative tools which will be developed through the Humane Science Foundation.
EDUCATION & TRAINING PROGRAMME
The Humane Science Foundation offers tutorials, courses and training modules to develop and use animal-free assessment technology. The programme is presented by the Humane Science Academy. Furthermore, the Humane Science Foundation offers the possibility to provide volunteers to present lectures at school, college or university, informing students on the latest possibilities of applying patient-focused and animal-free methods and technology.
Download here the Organovo poster
on the 3D bioprinted Human Kidney Model
( Reference 1: “Zo Doende 2016” (published in 2017), NVWA, The Netherlands )
