CAAT Newsletter: Vol. 14, No. 1, Fall 1996

CAAT Celebrates 15^th Anniversary

By Alan M. Goldberg, Ph.D.

In September 1996, the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) marked the 15^th anniversary of its founding. I would like to use this Director's Diary to review the history of the Center and to discuss some of CAAT's accomplishments, and its products and their impact. We have also invited friends and supporters to give their perspectives on the events of the past 15 years. You will read their comments throughout this issue.

Fifteen years ago the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health was approached by the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association (CTFA) to see if we could assist them in developing non-whole animal methods for safety evaluation. They informed us that the industry was interested in working with a university to develop these new methods and approaches.

Dr's Gareth Green, D.A. Henderson (then dean of the School) and I propose a research program based on peer-review to fund the best science that would allow us to develop these new methods. There was competition among the different institutions and, as I understand it, two schools were finally invited to present to the Scientific Advisory Board of the CTFA, with Johns Hopkins School of Public Health awarded a three year grant for the CTFA on Friday, September 21, 1981. The press conference was uneventful, but on Monday of the following week, we received 357 telephone calls asking us what we had done to decrease the use of animals. Clearly, the public was interested in our work.

After several internal meetings of Hopkins faculty who agreed to serve as CAAT Advisory Board members (Gareth Gree, D.A. Henderson, Henry Wagner, Frank Loew, and I), we set up the program and invited the first full Advisory Board to meet in February of 1982. Board members were individuals with expertise in specific areas of relevance to the work of the Center. The weather in Baltimore was terrible that week, but the Advisory Board came together for an absolutely wonderful beginning.

During those early discussions, it was difficult to separate the animal protection people on the board from the academic and industrial scientists. There clearly was consensus on the importance of animal welfare, with equal emphasis that only the best science should be funded. To this day, peer-reviewed science is the driving force of the Center, with our expanding education and information programs becoming co-equal partners.

We have a unique product line at CAAT. It includes peer-reviewed publications in scientific literature, information to all our stake-holders through our own publications such as the newsletter and CAATALYST, and the translation of basic methods into tests that can be used for product safety evaluation. One example of the latter is the Avon Program Project. Eight years ago, we initiated a program to develop in vitro methods to predict hypersensitivity, both irritant and allergenic. When we started we knew the task would be difficult. But over the past eight years, it has become very clear that our grantees have produced useable methods and tests to evaluate safety. It is difficult to attend a scientific session dealing with the issue of dermal hypersensitivity that does not begin with the sentence, "We began working in this area when we were funded through CAAT and the Avon Program Project."

Our newsletter is now read by at least 50,000 people in the U.S., Europe, and Japan and can be accessed via the CAAT home page. This web page continues to evolve and provide links to many of the other web sites dealing with alternatives and animal issues.

From the beginning, CAAT has worked to create a dialogue between animal protectionists, scientists, industry and government regulatory agencies, i.e. among our stakeholders. From the very beginning, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency were invited to sit on the Advisory Board and we have had, over our entire history, continuous government representation. More recently, we have expanded this with a representative from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the lead agency in dealing with the alternatives issue, and at the international level, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a regulatory body composed of 24 countries, including the U.S.

In May 1995, Prof. Michael Balls, head of ECVAM and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of FRAME, asked if I would co-chair a meeting to look at the future of the 3Rs.

In order to accommodate the late Rex Burch, who was ill at the time and unable to travel, we decided to hold the meeting in his home town, Sheringham, and invited colleagues from the U.S., and several European countries to participate in these discussions. Our focus was asking whether the 3Rs remain relevant and appropriate, and if so, how could we advance knowledge and implementation of these principles in the future.

All the participants at the meeting unanimously agreed that the 3Rs as originally described by Bill Russell and Rex Burch remains scientifically valid today. The Sheringham group then developed a series of recommendations to further the implementation of the 3Rs. CAAT has taken a very active role in helping to disseminate the information produced at this workshop and in June of 1996, an editorial written by CAAT was published in Science. It is hard to define and evaluate the impact of this editorial, but the mail that we have gotten to date is most encouraging.

In a recent newsletter, we focused attention on Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs). It is very clear from the response that we received and the requests for bulk copies of this issue that one of our future activities will be to highlight alternatives for IACUCs and to help our fellow scientists deal with this difficult issue.

Our first 15 years have been an incredible experience. We have learned much and feel that we are no longer on the fringe, but very much a part of the mainstream. With the recent formation of U.S. Government's Interagency Coordinating Committee for the Validation of Alternative MEthods (ICCVAM) and their recommendations for more active participation in this area, the future looks bright. Our European colleagues have been active in this area for more than 15 years and we are truly encouraged by the acceptance that the 3Rs are now receiving within the U.S.

I hope that as many of you as possible can attend the 2^nd World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences. It is one more tangible expression of the impact of CAAT and our colleagues throughout the world.

Thanks for all of your support.