Latest news from the NC3Rs: December 2024

With funding from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, we have committed £4.85M across 21 awards to accelerate the uptake of non-animal approaches and replace animal-derived products in research and testing. The projects include collaborations across disciplines, sectors and institutes nationwide, and focus on two key areas:   

• Eleven infrastructure awards, totalling £3.95M, to set the foundations for sustained change and make non-animal approaches accessible to more scientists than ever before. 
• Ten awards, totalling £905k, to pave the way for non-animal derived products to become the default choice for researchers using in vitro approaches. 

This year’s projects include a range of technologies from complex in vitro models, such as microphysiological systems and organoids, to computational models incorporating machine learning. Alongside their research projects, NC3Rs-funded PhD students benefit from tailored training opportunities to support them in achieving a successful PhD and building their skills to aid a future career in the research ecosystem. Projects include both developing novel technologies and combining existing technologies to apply to new scientific questions and replace the use of animals in research. 

If you teach students about animal research or support early careers researchers with in vivo experiments, consider using the EDA as an engaging way to put experimental design concepts into practice. Lecturers at the University of Nottingham have embedded the EDA into undergraduate teaching, giving students an opportunity to use statistics in real world research scenarios and prepare them for their own in vivo experiments.

Register for our next virtual EDA workshop 

Thursday 16 January 2025, 9.00 – 11.00 (GMT) 

During this interactive session Dr Esther Pearl (NC3Rs Programme Manager for Experimental Design) will give a live demonstration of the EDA before answering your questions and providing personalised feedback as you design your own experiment.

Read the latest issue of the Royal Society of Biology’s magazine to find out how we have driven 3Rs advances and applied emerging technologies to replace, reduce and refine the use of animals over the past two decades. Dr Genevieve Barr, NC3Rs science manager, celebrates our 20-year anniversary by exploring the 3Rs as the constant guiding principle for ethical, impactful – and better – science.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has produced a draft guideline on the phasing out of animal tests for the quality control of biological products that is currently open for public consultation. The intention of this guidance is to support manufacturers and regulators to implement the 3Rs while product-specific WHO guidelines are being updated to integrate alternative approaches. 
This is in response to the recommendations from an NC3Rs-led review of the animal testing requirements in WHO quality control and batch release guidelines. 

As the 2025 CRACK IT Challenge process begins, we sat down with our Advisory Board Chair Professor Mike Capaldi to talk about innovation in the 3Rs and the important role Sponsors play in our Challenges. Sponsors are engaged throughout the project lifetime, from submitting a Challenge idea to collaborating with awardees, providing in-kind contributions and gaining early access to the 3Rs technology developed to advance R&D and replace, reduce or refine animal use.

A new 3Rs product, Morph_ONE, has been launched by ImmuONE for precise and targeted safety assessment of inhaled substances in vitro and reduces the reliance on in vivo inhalation toxicity studies. The Morph_ONE cell painting assay, developed through NC3Rs CRACK IT Challenge funding, examines alveolar macrophage responses, analysing features like cell shape and vacuolation to provide mechanistic insights into lung immune responses. The assay allows comparison with historical safety data and can be used to identify harmful compounds early in drug development.

A team led at Toxys has proceeded to the next stage of the CrossDART CRACK IT Challenge to develop and qualify multi-species in vitro assays to reduce reliance on in vivo embryo-fetal developmental studies. With NC3Rs funding Toxys human ReproTracker® assay will be expanded to include rat and rabbit stem cells. The multi-species assays will be qualified with reference compounds and the data generated will be integrated into computational models to make species-specific predictions of teratogenicity.

The funding is based on successful proof-of-concept work. The project is supported by in-kind contributions (e.g. expertise, end-user requirements, compounds to test and support with regulatory interaction) from eight international sponsors from the pharmaceutical and not-for-profit sectors.

In our new ‘In Conversation’ webinar series we will be joined by industry leaders and community experts to explore the latest developments in new approach methodologies. The series is exclusively open to members of our NAMs Network – join us to learn more about the field, ask questions and contribute to the conversation on advancing the development and use of NAMs. 

NAMs Network In Conversation: Opportunities under UK chemicals regulations
Wednesday 29 January, 14.00-15.00 (GMT)

The first webinar in the series will focus on opportunities and future directions for applying NAMs under UK chemicals regulations led by Dr Camilla Alexander-White (MKTox Consultancy) and Dr Natalie Burden (Head of NAMs Strategy, NC3Rs). 

Thursday 30 January, 14.00 – 15.00 (GMT) 

Learn more about the new ARRIVE study plan and how recording experimental design best practice prior to conducting a study can increase the likelihood of producing high quality research data from animal experiments.

As part of an NC3Rs-funded project to increase the uptake of 3D bioprinting approaches, Professor Kenny Dalgarno is organising a series of events to highlight a novel bioprinting technology which offers new capabilities for creating in vitro models to increase their utility to replace animal use. The events include a demonstration of the technology followed by a research seminar.

• Thursday 13 February 2025, University of Bristol: Next generation 3D bioprinting for cancer disease modelling.
• Wednesday 19 February 2025, Newcastle University: Commercialisation of in vitro models.
• Friday 28 February 2025, University of Cambridge: Pioneering bioprinting in embryogenesis, cardiac tissue, leukaemia and orthopaedics.