Can Lab-grown Human Skin Replace Animals in Toxicity Testing?

It likely comes as no surprise that many common household chemicals and medical products as well as industrial and agricultural chemicals, may irritate human skin temporarily or, worse, cause permanent, corrosive burns. In order to prevent undue harm regulators in the U.S. and beyond require safety testing of many substances to identify their potential hazards and to ensure that the appropriate warning label appears on a product. Traditionally, such skin tests have been done on live animals—although in recent decades efforts to develop , along with ones that are more relevant to people have resulted in new models based on laboratory-grown human skin. New experimental models based on three-dimensional reconstructions of human skin are helping to reduce chemical testing on live animals, but cannot yet replace animals altogether.
This type of testing is not only important because it saves many animals, but also because it can protect humans from the damaging effects of toxic chemicals.
The reason why this article was written was to inform people about efforts to create new forms of testing in order to help animals.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rabbit-rest-can-lab-grown-human-skin-replace-animals