Accelerating the use of non-animal reagents for in vitro research
The NC3Rs has published a new report describing the outputs and impacts of a funding call to support a shift away from animal-derived products to animal-free alternatives.
In 2024, we invested £905k to accelerate the adoption of animal-free products and reagents in in vitro research, as part of a package of £5M funding from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). The targeted investment was designed to address key barriers to the uptake of animal-free products and reagents in order to build confidence in their use in routine research applications. Ten awards were funded for projects that included the evaluation of recombinant antibodies, chemically-defined media and synthetic matrices for routine cell culture studies.
Read the report: Accelerating the use of non-animal reagents for in vitro research.
Animal-derived products and reagents such as foetal bovine serum (FBS), extracellular matrices and antibodies are widely used in in vitro research. Their generation can involve significant suffering for the animals involved – in addition undefined composition, batch-to-batch variability and limited standardisation or quality control for many products and reagents can compromise the reproducibility of the experiments they are used in. Non-animal alternatives are available, with significant scientific and ethical advantages, however, their use has been limited by a lack of comparative performance data in routine research applications.
Across the portfolio of awards the projects have supported the characterisation, validation or optimisation of over 200 non-animal derived reagents and model components, directly enabling the replacement of thousands of animals each year. This work has involved 18 academic and industry partners, attracted more than £390k in direct and in-kind contributions from project partners and host institutions, and leveraged almost £1M in follow-on funding to support further optimisation, validation and adoption of animal-free products and reagents.
Moving away from animal-derived products requires researchers to have confidence that alternatives will work reliably in their own experimental systems. These awards show how targeted investment can generate the evidence needed to drive wider adoption, with early impacts demonstrating their potential to meaningfully replace animals.
Katie Bates, Head of Research Funding
Read more about other awards made under the £5M DSIT funding package in our impact report: Non-animal methods infrastructure grants. Eleven awards totalling £3.95M were made to establish national facilities for stem cells, bioprinting, organoids and organ-on-a-chip systems, providing greater access to these technologies as well as training opportunities for researchers across the UK.