[New Approach Method for drug discovery and development aimed at regulatory acceptance]

Recently, the importance of safety assessment based on mechanism of action for drug discovery has been emphasized, and international organizations are increasingly requesting safety assessment using non-animal test methods (Hereafter referred to as alternative method) that are not based on animal experiments using human-derived cells or tissues. However, it is clear that the variety of phenomena captured in animal studies cannot be covered by a stand-alone alternative method, as has been developed in the past, and there are some cases that are not intended to assess human toxicity based on comparison with the data of animal experiments. Expectations are therefore growing for the use of the New Approach Method (NAM) in drug discovery. In this article, we summarize the current status of alternative methods for reproductive toxicity testing and the regulatory acceptance of safety assessments by the Microphysiological system (MPS) as examples regarding NAM.