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 HUMANE SCIENCE FOUNDATION

The Humane Science Foundation is an independent and international charity organization to stimulate and promote humane science : putting patients first, replacing animal testing, progressing drug research to its next frontier.It aims to support patients and replace animal testing by innovating drug research and development of animal-free methods in science.   FOCUS ON 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 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, rare diseases, multiple diseases, multiple drug regimes, innate dysfunctions or inborn malformations, and personal drug sensitivities.

 FOCUS ON 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 about 500.000 animals are used in animal experiments each year. They tremendously suffer: in the Netherlands over 65% of laboratory animals are being used for experiments without sedation, nor given anesthetics.

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.   ACTIVITIES The Humane Science Foundation works on new innovative models and methods for medicine development without the use of animal experiments. Nowadays, suffering of animals have become unnecessary as new science and technology open the way 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 improved and animal-free drug development in three directions: 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 AND TRAINING PROGRAMME: Through the Humane Science Academy, the Humane Science Foundation presents a first tutorial how to use animal-free assessment technology and how to write an animal-free dossier to be approved by the regulatory authorities. Come and visit the website www.humanescienceacademy.org  </ul> <BR> Website: www.humanescience.org