Inspiring Business by Sharing Success
Added by Love Business East Midlands | 1 June 2020
UPDATED: 1 June 2020
XCellR8 specialises in in vitro (animal-free) testing, providing safety and efficacy data for cosmetics and chemicals at its GLP accredited laboratory in Warrington, and works with many well-known cosmetics companies such as Lush and The Body Shop along with global ingredient suppliers.
FRAME is committed to replacing the use of animals in scientific experiments, and is dedicated to the development of new and scientifically valid methods that will replace the need for laboratory animals in medical and scientific research, education, and testing.
Its Board of Trustees provides strategic direction and governance and works alongside the charity’s team that is led by CEO Celean Camp. Dr Treasure joins FRAME’s Trustees Gary Thomson, Professor David Kendall, Mary Newman, and the Chair of Trustees Dr Anna Cadogan.
Dr Treasure founded XCellR8 in 2008 to deliver entirely animal and animal-product free regulatory safety tests, replacing traditional tests with scientifically and ethically advanced methods. She is no stranger to FRAME – after completing her Physiology & Pharmacology degree at Sheffield, she undertook her PhD in the FRAME laboratory at the University of Nottingham
Today, Dr Treasure is a leading voice on the replacement of animal testing, as she explains: “I am passionate about the vision of creating a more ethical testing industry, without animal testing and animal components, and accelerating the shift to scientifically advanced methods.
“Clearly, there is much common ground for my work and FRAME’s purpose and vision. Our aims and objectives are very much aligned as we both strive for the replacement of animal testing in medical and scientific research and the use of scientifically and ethically advanced approaches.
“XCellR8’s work focuses on the use of the latest technology and research in the movement towards a more ethical and sustainable testing industry, and I have worked in the field of replacing animal testing for 25-years. My career, which is embedded in ethical science, maynot have followed this direction if it hadn’t been for FRAME,” she explains. “I did my PhD at the FRAME Alternatives Laboratory and will always be grateful for the opportunity and everything I learnt.
“FRAME has been the springboard for so many careers in science and research, and its education programme and the opportunities afforded to science graduates is exceptional. I am thrilled and honoured to join its Board of Trustees, and this is my chance to give something back to an amazing organisation, to share my experiences gained in the field of alternatives, and support FRAME as it enters its next fifty years.”
Carol’s academic career involved the development of reconstructed human skin models for non-animal testing, after which she worked for Cascade Biologics, where she concentrated on providing human cell culture systems to scientists all over the world. She established and ran the European operation before co-founding XCellR8. As its CEO, Carol is focused on finding replacements for animal tests and to provide these to the cosmetics, personal care, household product and chemical industries.
FRAME, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, was instrumental in developing and establishing a validation process for in vitro assays (test tube experiments) for assessing toxicities of chemicals. The move to validated in vitro assays by the cosmetics industry has been highly successful and FRAME has collaborated with many well-known cosmetics and household product companies, including L’Oréal, Gillette, Avon and Marks & Spencer.
Dr Andrew Bennett was appointed as Director of the FRAME Alternatives Laboratory in 2006 and research now focuses on using samples obtained with full ethical approval and under licence from the Human Tissue Authority, from operations at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, to construct in vitro models of human cells and organs for biomedical research.