By John Gever, Senior Editor, MedPage Today
Published: December 16, 2011
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is halting new grants for research using chimpanzees while the agency develops policies on such studies, NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, announced Thursday.
He said he had decided to follow recommendations by an Institute of Medicine (IOM) panel, also released Thursday, that called for strict limits on research use of chimps.
"Most current use of chimpanzees for biomedical research is unnecessary," the IOM report concluded. The panel found that nearly all such studies could have been performed in other ways or skipped entirely.
According to the report, research on chimps should meet each of the following criteria:
- No other suitable animal or in vitro model is available
- Conducting the study in humans would be unethical
- Not conducting the study in chimps would "significantly slow or prevent important advancements" involving serious human diseases
The panel gave broader latitude to genomic studies involving chimps, but still insisted that they be performed as a last resort and only when sample collection is "minimally invasive" and "minimizes pain and distress."
In accepting the recommendations, Collins said in a statement that previous research on chimps had been valuable.
"However, new methods and technologies developed by the biomedical community have provided alternatives to the use of chimpanzees in several areas of research," he said.
Areas where the IOM committee still saw value in chimp-based studies included research on certain monoclonal antibody therapies, social behaviors, and comparative genomics.
One hot topic in which the committee failed to reach consensus was on the use of chimps to study vaccines to prevent hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection.
Chimps are the only nonhuman species that can be infected with HCV.
"The committee agreed that it would be possible and ethical to test a prophylactic vaccine in humans without prior testing in chimpanzees, provided it was first shown to be safe in other animals," according to the IOM report.
"However, the committee was split on whether use of chimpanzees is required to rule out candidate products with lesser potential before costly and time-consuming human clinical trials, or whether such testing would provide otherwise unattainable information on the safety of candidate vaccines."
The report added that, in panel members' opinions, therapeutic anti-HCV vaccines and drugs could be developed without chimpanzees.
Collins said he would appoint a working group at NIH to propose specific polices for implementing the IOM recommendations.
The group also will advise on what to do with existing chimp colonies owned or supported by the NIH.
"We will not issue any new awards for research involving chimpanzees until processes for implementing the recommendations are in place," Collins said.
John VandeBerg, PhD, director of the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio, Texas -- home to one of the largest chimpanzee research colonies -- did not object to the recommendations.
In a statement, VandeBerg said he expected that the NIH working group "will help us in our ongoing efforts to ensure that research conducted with chimpanzees is both necessary and appropriate."
He also noted that chimpanzees have been irreplaceable in developing vaccines against hepatitis B virus, a point acknowledged in the IOM report as well. Although VandeBerg did not say so outright, he seemed to be hinting that such research should not be on NIH's chopping block.
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