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America's pharmaceutical industry is facing a 'monkey problem' & reason is China

By · Via Times of India · Published by Everything Blog

In short

The shortage has worsened because cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools are enabling scientists to design novel experimental therapies far faster than before. These preclinical drug candidates must be rigorously evaluated in macaques to assess toxicity and biological outcomes prior to human clinical trials. Consequently, laboratory imports of roughly 20,000 research subjects each year have become far more expensive and difficult to maintain.

Key points

  • Accelerating artificial intelligence tools in pharmaceutical discovery are driving up the…: Accelerating artificial intelligence tools in pharmaceutical discovery are driving up the total research demand for animal safety testing.
  • American medical researchers typically require approximately 20,000 imported monkeys ever…: American medical researchers typically require approximately 20,000 imported monkeys every year to sustain preclinical trial pipelines.
  • Safer Human Medicine plans to breed 30,000 macaques over the next 20 years to build a dom…: Safer Human Medicine plans to breed 30,000 macaques over the next 20 years to build a domestic supply.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

America's pharmaceutical industry is facing a lab monkey crisis because of AI. A TechCrunch report says that the rising costs and restrictions on imports are adding pressure on laboratories. China has played a major role in supplying laboratory monkeys to the US. China, as stated in the report, accounted for nearly 60% of America's laboratory monkey imports before it banned exports in 2020. Facing supply constraints, American laboratories subsequently turned to Cambodia. However, a 2022 investigation found that wild-caught monkeys were falsely represented as captive-bred animals. Now, a startup backed by Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale plans to establish a large-scale monkey breeding facility in the US to help address the problem.

Palantir co-founder's startup aims to tackle monkey problem of American pharmaceutical industry

As stated in the report, Safer Human Medicine, said to be backed by Joe Lonsdale aims to eventually breed 30,000 macaques over the next twenty years. The proposed facility is intended to reduce American laboratories' dependence on imported monkeys, which are widely used in pharmaceutical research and testing.

The shortage has become more pressing as AI helps…

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