Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. and BASF have agreed to collaborate on research into a more sustainable, in vitro system for chemical safety evaluation.

Recent years have seen an increase in stringent regulations for registration of agricultural chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and the demand to increase human relevance of safety studies. For these reasons, Sumitomo Chemical and BASF aim to create a system that supports the development of safe chemicals, while reducing the need for conventional animal testing.

As the first step in their research, Sumitomo Chemical and BASF aim to establish a new line of fully functional cultured cells to enable the safety evaluation of chemicals in a more efficient and more precise way than conventional methods.

Dr. Peter Eckes, President of BASF Bioscience Research, said: “BASF celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, and we have a history of continuous commitment to sustainability throughout our operations. In this collaboration we are combining the strength of both companies to develop new methods to reduce animal testing.”

Ikuzo Ogawa, Managing Executive Officer of Sumitomo Chemical in charge of technology and research & development, said, “We will contribute to building a sustainable society through supplying safer chemicals. We are very delighted to work on the collaborative research of such great social significance in the year marking the 100th anniversary of the start of Sumitomo Chemical’s operations.”