| Winter
2005• Volume XIV, Number 1
PCRM Develops World’s First Cruelty-Free Insulin Assay
Each year, U.S. doctors and researchers order innumerable blood
tests for patients with diabetes or suspected diabetes. As laboratories
analyze the insulin levels in patients’ blood, they employ
an assay procedure that uses cruelly produced animal-derived ingredients.
There has been no available alternative—until now.
In January 2004, PCRM president Neal Barnard, M.D., launched an
important clinical trial to test the effect of a low-fat, vegan
diet on patients with type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately, the laboratories
he contracted with for clinical tests measured insulin in a particularly
gruesome way. They used antibodies to detect insulin, and these
antibodies were produced from cells that had been placed into the
abdomens of living mice. The unfortunate animals become painfully
swollen with antibody-filled fluid, which the laboratories extract
with a needle and use in test kits. Considered “living factories,”
these animals are used by the millions each year, not just for insulin
assays but for all types of medical tests.
Where There’s a Will, There’s an Alternative
Rather than support this form of animal use, PCRM decided to look
for a lab that could grow the antibody-producing cells in a test
tube. Working under Dr. Barnard’s direction, PCRM research
analyst Megha Even, M.S., took on the challenge. She soon located
a laboratory in Emeryville, California—BiosPacific—that
was willing to try to grow the cells in the test tube, rather than
in mice.
But another obstacle stood in the team’s way. Growing antibodies
in test tubes typically requires the use of fetal calf serum as
a growth promoter. Calf serum is a gruesome byproduct of the slaughterhouse
industry, and it has been hotly controversial, not only for the
cruelty involved in its production, but also for its possible contamination
with mad cow prions or other disease carriers. Fetal serum is also
as biologically variable and unstandardized as it is cruel. So the
PCRM team asked BiosPacific to work out a system of cellular growth
promotion that sidestepped fetal calf serum.
Was it possible not only to grow the cells entirely in the test
tube, but to do so without the usual growth factors in fetal calf
serum?
It took months of work, and the process was not cheap. But it eventually
became clear that, indeed, the cells grew perfectly well with this
method and produced the antibodies the team needed.
A Second Hurdle Overcome
The next challenge was to incorporate these antibodies into a
test kit. To do that, PCRM worked with Linco Research of St. Charles,
Missouri, one of the leading suppliers of insulin kits. It was several
months before the kit was ready. Finally, several human blood samples
were tested using the new system, and the results were compared
to the existing insulin assays. When the data came in, the laboratory
called PCRM to tell them the news: The new test was every bit as
accurate as the old one—or perhaps just slightly better.
The new method is now being used to analyze insulin levels in PCRM’s
study participants’ blood samples. Even is now working on
two scientific papers describing the project. Once published, the
papers will promote the use of PCRM’s new custom assay and
encourage researchers to develop alternatives to other tests that
use animal-derived ingredients.
For more information about this assay, please contact Megha Even,
M.S., at 202-686-2210, ext. 327, or meven@pcrm.org.
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