News

https://nc3rs.org.uk/crackit/qsars-mixIndustry, small and medium sized enterprises and academia are coming together, through the NC3Rs CRACK IT programme, to solve three challenges faced by the pharmaceutical and chemical industries; all of which should reduce the number of animals used in scientific research.

The NC3Rs open innovation platform, CRACK IT, has awarded £4.9 million in its annual challenge-led competition, run in collaboration with the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK, formerly known as the Technology Strategy Board. 

Through CRACK IT Solutions, Dr Colin Brown (Newcastle University) has secured substantial investment and a new partner to make commercially available his primary human and rat kidney proximal tubule cell model for nephrotoxicity testing (aProximateTM).

Ostara Biomedical is seeking partners with skills in mouse zygote and blastocyst transfer to validate the effectiveness of a novel pessary approach to induce pseudopregnancy and reduce animals in transgenic breeding programmes.

Grants of £30,000 have been awarded by the NC3Rs CRACK IT Solutions programme to support new collaborations in the development and validation of new technologies to reduce animal use.

The 2013 CRACK IT Challenges were launched on 5 September at a meeting in central London.

The Challenges were outlined and the Sponsors met with potential applicants and the CRACK IT Team. There are five 2013 Challenges:

• Untangle
• InPulse
• Inhalation Translation
• NephroTube
• Virtual Infectious Disease Research

Each Challenge offers a research contract of up to £1 million and up to three years to complete the Challenge deliverables.