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Join us to celebrate this years’ International 3Rs Prize winners, awarded by NC3Rs and sponsored by GSK. Chaired by NC3Rs Board Chair Professor Dame Julia Buckingham, attendees will be able to hear directly from the winning and highly commended researchers to learn more about their papers and the 3Rs impacts of their work.
A news item, including the recording of the webinar, is available now: 3Rs Prize: Replacing animal-derived antibodies and in vivo antivenom tests.
Winner: Building confidence in recombinant reagents to replace animal-derived antibodies
The winners of this years’ 3Rs Prize are Dr Carl Laflamme, Dr Riham Ayoubi and Dr Peter McPherson from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Their winning paper applied a systematic and scalable characterisation approach to a panel of antibodies and found that non-animal derived recombinant antibodies performed better than traditional animal-derived monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies. They tested over 600 antibodies including those used in Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and motor neurone disease research. Non-animal derived antibodies have the potential to replace large numbers of animals used in antibody production and can offer significant benefits in terms of specificity and reproducibility. This paper from members of the YCharOS initiative presents a strategy to screen new high quality alternatives to animal-derived antibodies, building confidence in their use and driving uptake among the research community.
Highly commended: Replacing mice in antivenom potency testing
Dr Renata N.C. Nundes from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was highly commended for her paper on the development of an in vitro method for antivenom quality control. The current efficacy test recommended by the WHO is the lethality neutralisation assay where antivenom therapies are mixed with fatal doses of snakebite venom and administered intravenously to mice to assess the neutralising capacity of the therapy, which can lead to severe suffering including paralysis, seizures and haemorrhages. Typically, Renata’s lab would use 2,000 mice in potency testing annually. This in vitro method offers an alternative and they aim to share this approach with other groups working in the field.
Read more about this year's winning papers: Building confidence to replace animal-derived antibodies.
About the 3Rs Prize
The 3Rs Prize, sponsored by GSK, highlights outstanding and original work within the 3Rs and consists of a £28k prize grant and a £2k personal award. A £20k contribution is provided by GSK with all remaining funds, including the personal award made by the NC3Rs. The prize grant is intended to maximise the 3Rs impacts of the published research. This includes purchasing new equipment and consumables to aid further development, characterisation and qualification studies or supporting dissemination and training opportunities to increase awareness and uptake of the 3Rs approach.
The criteria assessed by the 3Rs Prize selection Panel include:
- Actual or potential impact on the 3Rs.
- Dissemination of the scientific and 3Rs impacts to date.
- Strength of plans for the Prize grant.
- Potential impacts for the research, the 3Rs and development of the individual.
Read more about our annual 3Rs Prize.