Faux Skin to Replace Animals in Cosmetic Lab Tests

The fight against cosmetics animal testing has taken a momentous step with the successful laboratory trial of the human skin model, SenCeeTox, which was developed by Michigan-based company CeeTox and financed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. SenCeeTox mimics the human epidermis and is intended to test whether chemicals will trigger allergic reactions on the skin, allowing it to replace test animals such as guinea pigs and mice. CeeTox’s model was effective in preliminary trials, so the company recently outsourced further testing to the Flemish Institute for Technological Research to determine if the positive results could be duplicated in a third party’s laboratory.The FITR’s trials also showed that SenCeeTox could be effectively implemented as a human skin model.