Eye Irritation Testing: The Way Forward. The Report and Recommendations of ECVAM Workshop 34

This is the report of the thirty-fourth of a series of workshops organised by the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM). ECVAM's main goal, as defined in 1993 by its Scientific Advisory Committee, is to promote the scientific and regulatory acceptance of alternative methods which are of importance to the biosciences and which reduce, refine or replace the use of laboratory animals. One of the first priorities set by ECVAM was the implementation of procedures which would enable it to become well-informed about the state-of-the-art of non-animal test development and validation, and the potential for the possible incorporation of alternative tests into regulatory procedures. It was decided that this would be best achieved by the organisation of ECVAM workshops on specific topics, at which small groups of invited experts would review the current status of various types of in vitro tests and their potential uses, and make recommendations about the best ways forward (1). The workshop on Eye Irritation Testing: The Way Forward was held in Egham, UK, on 15-17 June 1998, under the chairmanship of Michael Balls (ECVAM, Italy). The workshop had two aims, the first of which was to review some of the previous multi-laboratory validation studies on alternatives to the Draize eye test and assess why many promising alternative methods were not successful in these studies. The second aim was to discuss strategies for making progress toward the short-term reduction, refinement, and eventual replacement, of the Draize test, including: a new approach to the validation of in vitro tests for eye irritancy, based on the use of reference standards, which promises to overcome some of the problems encountered in previous studies; the use of stepwise testing strategies which reduce and refine the use of animals in eye irritation testing; the use of multivariate and other statistical techniques for the further analysis of data generated in previous validation studies; and a programme of research aimed at understanding the underlying mechanisms of eye irritation.