Alternative Methods

Henkel is committed to sustainability and social responsibility. The company´s value contribution - in terms of sustainable development - is its brands and technologies which make people´s lives easier, better and more beautiful. Acting responsibly along the entire supply chain is crucial. As a Henkel Center of Excellence one of Phenion´s main businesses is to develop alternatives to animal testing and promote their application and wider distribution as part of Henkel´s sustainability activities.
Our activities in the area of alternatives to animal testing are based on the concept of the "Three R" formulated by Russell & Burch in 1959. "Three R" stand for the terms Refine, Reduce and Replace. The concepts require a minimization of strain on experimental animals (refinement), the reduction of the number of animals sacrificed for testing, and finally the complete replacement of animals through appropriate animal-free testing methods. Important approaches to achieve our goals are:

The testing of human compatibility of ingredients in vitro (from Latin: "in glass") using biological materials, e.g. cell cultures or tissue models.
The determination of the toxicity of substances on the basis of their chemical structure in silico (from Latin: "in a computer").
The development and application of intelligent test strategies (ITS), i.e. data on chemical and physical properties of matter are combined with knowledge from biological animal-free tests in order to evaluate the human compatibility of the substance correctly. After the application of these test strategies, often also called screenings, there usually remain only a few substance candidates whose toxicity then needs to be checked within validated toxicological tests. Validated tests are a prerequisite for ultimate risk assessment.

For more information please see here.