In April 2025, I had the privilege of representing XCellR8 at a landmark workshop hosted by the Animal-Free Safety Assessment (AFSA) Collaboration in Loch Lomond, Scotland. Bringing together international experts from regulatory bodies, industry, academia, and method developers, the event focused on developing practical strategies to phase out animal testing for acute and local toxicity endpoints.
The workshop tackled a pressing challenge: despite legal requirements stating that animal testing should be used only as a “last resort” (as enshrined in EU REACH Article 25), animals continue to be used for endpoints where scientifically suitable non-animal methods already exist. This persistent gap between legislation and practice demands urgent attention.
Our group worked to develop decision tree frameworks that provide transparent, step-by-step guidance for applying non-animal approaches across chemical regulations. These tools are designed to help registrants, regulators, and consultants navigate existing guidance documents and available methods in a consistent, documented manner. The frameworks cover endpoints including acute oral toxicity, skin sensitisation, and eye and skin irritation and corrosion (areas where XCellR8 has extensive expertise and where scientific consensus already supports non-animal approaches).
What made this workshop particularly valuable was its collaborative nature. We weren’t just developing theoretical frameworks in isolation. Representatives from regulatory authorities, industry players like L’Oreal, Clariant, and Evonik, and organisations like the OECD worked side by side to ensure these decision trees would be practical, globally applicable, and aligned with existing regulatory processes. This co-creation approach recognises that genuine change requires input from all stakeholders from the outset.
The timing couldn’t be more significant. With the UK Government’s recent announcement of their roadmap to phase out animal testing (including a complete ban on skin and eye irritation tests in 2026), momentum is clearly building! The decision tree frameworks we developed could provide exactly the kind of practical implementation tools that regulators and industry need to make these transitions successfully.
The next steps are equally exciting. The workshop report has just been published in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230025002016), and working groups are now finalising individual decision trees for each endpoint, with further peer-reviewed publications planned and submissions to the OECD IATA Case Study Program expected in 2026. The ultimate goal is integration into official regulatory guidance documents, which would represent formal recognition and consistent application across jurisdictions. At XCellR8, we’ve always maintained that non-animal methods are both ethically and scientifically superior to outdated animal approaches. Being part of this initiative reinforces our belief that the tide is genuinely turning. These aren’t just aspirational goals anymore. We’re developing concrete tools, backed by rigorous science and regulatory expertise, to make animal-free safety assessment the norm rather than the exception.
The workshop demonstrated what’s possible when diverse experts unite around a common goal. Now the real work begins: turning these frameworks into widely adopted practice. If regulators embrace these tools and industry commits to their implementation, we could be witnessing a genuine turning point in how chemical safety is assessed globally.
By Tom Ward
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