Microdosing can replace animal safety tests
Microdosing is used to study how very small doses of potential medicines behave in human volunteers (sometimes called Phase 0 human trials). It should make the drug discovery process more efficient by highlighting earlier whether a compound is effective. New, urgently needed medicines could be available sooner and more cheaply as a result.
If microdosing shows that certain potential medicines are not suitable, it should reduce the number of animals used because these compounds would not need to be further developed and tested. But compounds that look promising would need to go through development and testing involving animals.
Microdosing has limitations like any other method of testing. There is no guarantee that the body's reaction to a microdose will be the same as it is to a full dose. It is a relatively new method and has yet to be fully validated, although it looks promising.
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