What are the current challenges?

Because the use of animals in experiments is ethically problematic, there is also legislation to protect the animals (EU Directive 2010/63EU). For example, a harm benefit analysis needs to be performed in order to gain ethical approval for being allowed to perform animal studies. It is of great importance that animals are used only in studies of high scientific quality, where unnecessary suffering is avoided. Otherwise it would not be ethical to perform these studies, firstly because of the animals that are being exposed to suffering, and secondly for patients, as they are going to receive new experimental treatments based on the results of these animal studies. A study on Investigator Brochures summarizing the animal evidence before embarking on clinical trials, has demonstrated that the information from animal studies does not live up to good scientific quality standards and lacks critical summaries of the total evidence (Wieschowski et al., 2018). Moreover, selective use of animal data in order to obtain funding and to gain ethical approval for clinical trials has also been noted (Cohen, 2018).