UK minister unveils plan to cut animal testing through greater use of AI (www.theguardian.com)

The UK science minister Patrick Vallance unveiled a roadmap to accelerate phasing out animal testing by boosting AI, organ‑on‑a‑chip systems, and 3D bioprinted human tissues. The plan pairs new research funding and streamlined regulation with explicit timelines: end regulatory animal tests for skin/eye irritation and sensitisation by end‑2026, stop mouse potency tests for botulinum toxin by 2027, and reduce dog and non‑human primate pharmacokinetic studies by 2030. The government stresses alternatives must match current safety standards for humans before replacements are accepted, and stakeholders from industry to animal‑welfare groups back the ambition. For the AI/ML community this creates immediate technical and translational opportunities: large‑scale in silico molecular screening and predictive toxicology models will be deployed to forecast safety and efficacy, while organ‑on‑a‑chip devices and 3D bioprinted tissues (skin, liver, etc.) will generate human‑relevant experimental data. That raises demands for high‑quality human biological datasets, multimodal models, uncertainty quantification, explainability, and standardised validation benchmarks to satisfy regulators. Successful implementation will hinge on tight integration of AI predictions with human‑cell platforms, clear regulatory pathways for model acceptance, and investment in reproducible, interoperable datasets and evaluation metrics.