Featured Guest

January 2024 Featured Guest: Dr. Charu Chandrasekera

Happy New Year,

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and welcome to 2024.

For those who are visiting us for the first time, thank you for joining.

This New Year’s blog post is exciting and important. I had mentioned introducing guests which I had the pleasure of interviewing for my documentaries. Absolutely brilliant and inspiring individuals, and one who comes first to mind is Dr. Chandrasekera. I met Dr. Chandrasekera in Windsor for the filming of my documentary, The Medical Illusion. I was immediately impressed by her knowledge, wisdom and passion. She is a pioneer, has appeared on TED Talks and is forging the future of biomedical research. For more information on Dr. Chandrasekera please visit www.uwindsor.ca/ccaam.

If you would like to watch The Medical Illusion, click here for the Free Documentaries page on TerraLuv.

For our February newsletter, our next guest will be another incredible and powerful individual, Camille Labchuk!

Camille is a lawyer and the executive director of Animal Justice. She is fearless and along with other lawyers, they work to pass new animal protection laws, hold industries accountable, and fight on behalf of animals in court. You won’t want to miss this one either.

Wishing all of you a prosperous 2024.
Gary Charbonneau & the TerraLuv team.

Some Words From Dr. Charu Chandresekera

Hello TerraLuv Family:

I am the founder and executive director of Canada’s first and only centre dedicated exclusively to animal-free science. At the Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods (CCAAM) located at the University of Windsor, our vision is to promote the replacement of animals in Canadian biomedical research, education, and regulatory testing through 21st century science, innovation, and ethics. As the national hub and the International interface, our mission is to serve as the Canadian nexus to advance animal-free science through national and international multi-sectoral partnerships (academic, industry, government and non-profit). We carry out our mission through 4 key pillars that we call RARE: Research, Academic, Regulatory, and Ethics/Welfare.

With the Research Pillar, we have a comprehensive research program to develop, validate, and promote new approach/non-animal methods (NAMs) to understand the molecular/cellular underpinnings of human disease and drug/chemical toxicity testing. We have many research projects utilizing diverse animal-free methods—from 3D-bioprinted human tissue (see photo) to computational modelling—to elucidate human biological complexity in health and disease. With the Academic Pillar, we are developing comprehensive training programs to build a solid knowledge base to train the next generation to think outside the cage! We currently offer Canada’s first graduate course in NAMs, The Human Subject: Animal-Free Methods in Biomedical Research and Toxicology. With the Regulatory Pillar, we collaborate with national (Health Canada and Environment & Climate Change Canada) and international regulators and alternatives centres in other countries to promote the regulatory acceptance of NAMs to modernize chemical risk assessment.

You can take a virtual tour of our lab here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIFwWp0sWKI.

This is a historic year for Canada, with two landmark legislative mandates that passed in June 2023 to ban cosmetic testing on animals (via amendments to the Food and Drugs Act) and to replace/reduce animals in chemical toxicity testing (via amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act)—the latter directly influenced by the Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods.

With colossal failures in drug development (95% failure rate) and chemical safety testing (350,000 chemicals and mixtures globally with limited toxicology data), there is an urgent need to adopt NAMs and higher standards of ethics in our scientific culture. Canada has been lagging behind many countries, but with this new legislation, there is renewed hope for Canada to significantly alter our animal testing landscape. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done to phase out animal testing in Canada. Let us collectively unite to support this arduous endeavour, fostering a better Canada for humans, animals, and our environment.

Thank you!

Best regards,
Dr. Charu Chandrasekera
Executive Director
Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods