ABSTRACT
The use of animals for research purposes and for cosmetic efficacy testing is a sensitive matter. Regulatory agencies and political and scientific communities are pressing to ban the use of animals for such purposes. In Europe, this has led the Council of the European Union to approve legislation for banning the use of animals in the testing of cosmetic products, effective in 2009. This implies that alternative methods have been validated by the ECVAM (European Center for the Validation of Alternative Methods). At this time, only a few alternative testing methods have been validated for toxicological testing (previous chapter) and some of these methods use reconstructed human skin models. Nevertheless, human skin equivalents and skin organ culture models have already invaded cosmetic laboratories as alternatives to animal experimentation. They offer not only a way to comply with the demands of regulatory authorities, animal welfare organizations, and consumers, but also a means to improve and extend our knowledge on the biological processes in the skin. Moreover, they appear to be reliable, efficient, informative, and predictive tools for the screening, bioavailability, and efficacy testing of active ingredients.
