Ch. 12— Public and Private Funding Toward the Development of Alternatives • 267 
Solicitation for Proposals by The Johns Hopkins 
Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing 
REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS 
REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS 
The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Ani- 
mal Testing is soliciting proposals. These research 
proposals should provide the fundamental knowl- 
edge base to develop alternative methods to whole 
animals for the safety evaluation of commercial 
products. 
The center is specifically interested in the use of 
human cells and tissues. Funds are available for 
studies of skin and eye irritation, inflammation, 
acute toxicity, and other organ specific toxicity. At 
the present time funds are unavailable for mutage- 
nicity and carcinogenicity. 
Grants will normally be funded up to a maximum of 
$20,000 per year including 15 percent overhead or 
actual costs, whichever is less. All grants will be on 
a yearly basis with continuation funding dependent 
upon an acceptable continuation of proposal. 
Abstract deadline: 30 March 1985. 
Application deadline: 30 May 1985. 
Application instructions can be obtained by contact- 
ing: Joan S. Poling, Secretary to the Director, Room 
2306, School of Hygiene and Public Health. 
Taken from Science 227:212, 1985. Copyright 1985 by the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science. 
circulating requests for proposals either for a 
broad, nonspecific area or for specific, investigator- 
initiated projects. In the first stage of a two-stage 
peer review, a group of scientific experts judges 
the proposal on the quality of the science proposed 
and its relevance to the mission of CAAT. Second, 
the advisory board votes on which projects to fund. 
The voting membership of the organization is aca- 
demic, although nonvoting members do represent 
the sponsors, government, and animal welfare 
groups. Table 12-4 lists examples of some of the 
projects funded by The Johns Hopkins Center. 
The Soap and Detergent Association is support- 
ing work at the University of Illinois to develop 
alternatives to eye irritancy tests with a 3 -year 
grant of $218,596. The program is designed to de- 
velop a mathematical model that would correlate 
! the responses to a series of in vitro tests with the 
test material’s potential to irritate the human eye 
( 1 7) . The Fund for Replacement of Animals in Med- 
ical Experiments (FRAME) reports that it is col- 
laborating with both the Rockefeller and Illinois 
groups, providing chemicals for use in blind trials 
on alternative methods (3). 
These various examples of private funding illus- 
trate the variety of mechanisms to provide sup- 
Table 12-4.— Selected Research Projects Supported 
by The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives 
to Animal Testing 
Condition and organ/Project description 
Irritation and inflammation: 
Vagina : Tests for vaginal products 
Eyes: Corneal cultures for tests 
Corneal cultures— plasminogen activator as an 
indication of irritation 
Skin: Human umbilical cord cells 
Fibroblast damage by chemicals 
Development of artificial skin 
Phototoxic chemicals and skin 
Architecture of skin in vitro 
Biological change/toxic response 
Cytotoxicity and acute toxicity: 
Liver. Response to toxins in solution 
Cells: In vitro production of metallothionein 
In vitro production of peroxisomes 
Effects of culture media on cells 
Chemicals’ effects on protein synthesis 
Organ specific effects: 
Heart, lung, kidney: Mechanistic data— acute and chronic 
organ toxicity 
Other projects: 
Nerves: Neurotoxicity/neuronal cell culture 
Teratology: Fruit fly assays 
Botulism: Evaluation of contamination of foods 
SOURCE: A.M. Goldberg, Director, The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives 
to Animal Testing, Baltimore, MD, 1985. 
port for the development of alternatives. The first, 
the Rockefeller Laboratory, is a case in which a 
corporation endows a single laboratory facility and 
funds the work of scientists within that group. The 
research conducted in the lab is closely allied with 
the products manufactured by the sponsor and 
with the testing required by those products. 
The second model, exemplified by The Johns 
Hopkins Center, is a central clearinghouse estab- 
lished to collect and disseminate funds in a wider 
variety of research areas . The source of the funds 
is also varied. The grants distributed within this 
structure are small (under $20,000) and not strictly 
comparable to the support accorded to the Rock- 
efeller lab, but The Johns Hopkins Center funds 
many more grants. 
The third example, the Soap and Detergent Asso- 
ciation, shows a single project within a university 
funded by an industrial concern. In this case the 
association draws funds from its constituent mem- 
bers and then acts as their proxy in distributing 
them. 
