Researchers across Europe are increasingly using new technologies — including digital twins, human stem cells, and computer modelling — to reduce the number of animals used in medical research while maintaining high safety standards for patients.
Scientists say the new methods are helping replace, reduce, and refine animal testing in areas ranging from medicine safety checks to environmental risk assessments.
One of the most promising developments is the use of “digital twins” — virtual control groups created using historical research data. In traditional drug safety studies, animals such as rats, mice, or dogs are used to test whether new medicines may cause harmful effects. Researchers also need separate control groups of animals living under the same conditions but without receiving the medicine.
Using large databases of previous toxicology studies, researchers developed virtual control groups that can digitally reproduce the results of live control animals. Early findings suggest this approach could reduce the number of rats used in preclinical studies in the EU by around 4,000 each year.
“Ideally you would not see any difference between the concurrent controls of live animals and the virtual controls,” said Thomas Steger-Hartmann of Bayer, who is the industry lead of VICT3R .
“VICT3R is showing that there are no significant differences affecting the outcome of the safety studies.”
VICT3R (Developing and implementing VIrtual Control groups To reducE animal use in toxicology Research) is a public-private partnership funded by the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI). The project is dedicated to reducing animal use in toxicology research by developing Virtual Control Groups (VCGs) — an innovative approach that enhances scientific outcomes while aligning with the 3Rs principles (Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement). Through this work, VICT3R aims to advance ethical and data-driven alternatives in regulatory testing.
The European Medicines Agency is now reviewing the approach as a possible new method for some safety studies.
Another major change involves replacing the rabbit pyrogen test, which has long been used to check injectable medicines for substances that can cause fever. For decades, around 400,000 rabbits worldwide were used annually for the test.
Researchers helped validate an alternative laboratory method called the monocyte activation test (MAT), which uses human cell-based testing instead of animals. Since 2025, the rabbit pyrogen test is no longer required under European Pharmacopoeia rules, allowing manufacturers to use suitable non-animal laboratory tests instead.
Scientists are also working to reduce the use of fish in environmental testing for medicines. New tools using existing pharmaceutical and clinical data can help determine when fish testing may not be necessary, potentially reducing fish use by around 30%.
At the same time, human stem cell research is becoming an increasingly important alternative to animal models. Scientists can now use skin or blood samples from volunteers to create induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which can develop into many different human cell types.
These cells allow researchers to study diseases such as Alzheimer’s using human laboratory-grown cells instead of relying only on animal models, which do not always fully reflect how diseases develop in humans.
Experts say the new technologies could improve both animal welfare and scientific accuracy, helping researchers better understand human diseases while reducing animal suffering.
The Innovative Health Initiative is a partnership between the European Union and industry associations representing the sectors involved in healthcare, namely COCIR (medical imaging, radiotherapy, health ICT and electromedical industries); EFPIA, including Vaccines Europe (pharmaceutical industry and vaccine industry); EuropaBio (biotechnology industry); and MedTech Europe (medical technology industry).
21.05.2026.
