Our Responsible Approach to Science
At Rousselot, it is our priority to produce food, nutrition, pharmaceutical and medical products that are safe and of premium quality. As some of our products offer health benefits or can support new therapies, they need to be backed by strong scientific studies.
Providing high quality and safe products
Rousselot collagen-based solutions are safe products used by the food, nutrition, pharmaceutical and medical industries. Our strong quality system ensures that the products we deliver comply with all regulations and answer the quality and safety criteria customers and consumers expect. From the sourcing, to our operations, sales, and research activities, it is our priority to ensure we are trusted in all actions we conduct.
Proving the benefits of our health and nutritional products through solid science
Our products bring nutritional and health benefits consumers can enjoy all over the world. We believe that these benefits need to be substantiated and we continually conduct research activities to understand and scientifically assess the effectiveness of our products. These scientific studies are performed either in house by our scientists or by carefully selected third party research organizations that are leaders in the field of interest.
The vast majority of Rousselot’ s studies are either in vitro or clinical studies. Rousselot is committed to limit in vivo animal research to the maximum and only uses this practice to support human and public health when no in vitro alternative is available. At Rousselot, we make sure that these studies strictly follow national and international regulations on the use of animals for testing. They are performed by third party research organizations selected with care and embracing the principles of the 3Rs ethical framework aiming to Replace, Reduce and Refine animal testing.
Adhering to European Union cosmetics REGULATION (EC) No 1223/2009, no experiment on animal has ever been run by Rousselot for our research on skin health.
Supporting the development of new research techniques
Still today, animal testing remains key in the preclinical research phase to evaluate the potential of new therapies and their safe usage in humans. It is therefore required by regulatory authorities.
There are today multiple research efforts aimed at reducing animal testing. At Rousselot we believe that our biomedical gelatins and collagens allow for greater use of in vitro techniques to reduce the need for whole animal testing:
- Used in hydrogels, gelatin mimics the native extra cellular matrix and is therefore a naturally effective medium to maintain cell viability and achieve efficient and controlled differentiation.
- Our purified gelatins can be crosslinked and serve as a scaffold for 3D cell culture applications in tissue engineering or organ on a chip applications. 3D cell culture is a more accurate representation of human tissue microenvironment providing more predictive and physiologically relevant information for in vivo tests.
Here again, Rousselot solutions can enable more testing and improve translatability outside living organisms herewith reducing the need of animal models.