Literature Searches for Animal Testing Alternatives

For help completing IACUC protocol applications.

Free Online Databases

The U.S. government produces a number of federally-funded public access databases. The most well-known of these, in the medical community, is PubMed MEDLINE. While PubMed MEDLINE may be your first choice for medical research, the other options listed here may also be very useful. They include databases for general agricultural research, toxicity and cell-line data, and reports & proposals from research projects receiving federal funding. Also included in this list are mutagenicity and toxicity databases developed and maintained by a few non-governmental organizations.

  • Searches are not easily replicable, especially with passage of time
  • PubMed records are duplicated here (i.e. searching Google Scholar then searching PubMed would yield no additional/different results)
  • Sources must be verified and evaluated on an individual basis since resources are not vetted
  • Accessing full-text can be difficult