RETHINK report supports role for minipigs in drug testing

Minipigs have many advantages for drug and chemical safety testing and could improve drug safety for humans, a European group of more than 40 industry, government and academic experts has found.

Minipigs have many advantages for drug and chemical safety testing and could improve drug safety for humans, a European group of more than 40 industry, government and academic experts has found. The group’s RETHINK report, funded by the EU, deals with the impact and animal welfare implications of minipigs in safety testing of new medicines and other products. It includes 20 proposals to optimise how minipigs are used in safety testing. Minipigs are miniature pig breeds that are easier to handle and better suited to a laboratory environment than farmyard pigs. The G?ttingen minipig, developed at the University of G?ttingen in Germany, and bred commercially in Denmark, is the leading breed in Europe. ‘The ethical issues of using minipigs were carefully addressed and we did not identify major differences compared with other non-rodent species,’ said Roy Forster, coordinator of the RETHINK project and chief scientific officer of CIT, a French non-clinical contract research organisat