NC3Rs early career researchers: Leading the way on 3Rs model adoption

Our early career engagement scheme specifically supports NC3Rs-funded PhD students and postdoctoral researchers and technical staff working on NC3Rs grants. The awards focus on:

• Disseminating research findings through key conferences, knowledge exchange visits and practical workshops.
• Supporting additional qualification studies to demonstrate that the 3Rs models developed are fit-for-purpose for use by collaborators or other end-users.
• Developing online resources to increase the reach and visibility of the 3Rs models developed within the scientific community.
• Professional development opportunities including networking activities and training courses to build technical skills. 

This year’s awardees include Dr Ines Moura, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leeds funded by a joint NC3Rs/BBSRC non-animal technologies award, who developed a high-throughput in vitro model that replicates the physiological and microbial environment of the pig colon. RoboHog is now used as a pre-screening tool at the National Pig Centre, the UK’s largest facility studying pig nutrition, replacing the need for up to 24 pigs per study. Through interactions with industrial collaborators, Ines has identified the opportunity for a similar approach to model the piglet gut. With the NC3Rs early career engagement award Ines will now build on the success of RoboHog and adapt it to create PiggyGut to replace piglets used to study weaning nutrition and the impacts of weaning on the microbiome. Ines will also attend a bioinformatics course to further develop her skills in analysing large microbial genomic datasets.

NC3Rs PhD student Francesca Lam at University College London developed a cerebral organoid model from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells to study neuronal circuit dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease. The model is able to replace the use of some transgenic mouse models that are often associated with severe atrophy of the brain and may require surgical interventions to insert biosensors or electrodes and to date has replaced the use of approximately 150 mice in her supervisor’s laboratory. Francesca will use her award for a knowledge exchange trip to Dr Kathryn Bowles’ lab at the University of Edinburgh in order to learn new organoid generation and imaging techniques to further expand the replacement potential of the cerebral organoid model. She will attend two international conferences on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease to expand her network and establish new collaborations with mouse model users to facilitate adoption of her in vitro model. 

Katherine Pye, a technician at the University of Exeter, worked on the adoption of a refined oral dosing method for use in mouse glucose tolerance testing as part of an NC3Rs Skills and Knowledge Transfer award. Traditionally, this test is performed by oral gavage or intraperitoneal injection. Katherine took a technique developed by Dr Tina Notter at the University of Zurich to train mice to voluntarily drink from a micropipette and applied it to glucose tolerance testing. She was able to show that the refined method produces a comparable glucose clearance profile to oral gavage, detects obesity-associated glucose intolerance and sex-based differences in glucose clearing profiles, and reduces stress based on plasma corticosterone levels. With her early career engagement award, Katherine will travel to the Universities of Otago and Auckland in New Zealand to train two leading research groups in this refined oral dosing approach expanding its application to gestational diabetes research. The findings from this work will contribute to her longer term goal of obtaining a PhD by publication.

Early career engagement award recipients:

• Emma Biglin (NC3Rs Training Fellow, University of Manchester, £15,000)
• Ceyda Caliskan (NC3Rs Postdoctoral researcher, University of Sheffield, £14,700)
• Kate Campbell (NC3Rs/BHF PhD student, University of Manchester £2,000)
• Sylvia Kaempf (NC3Rs PhD student, University of Manchester, £3,300)
• Francesca Lam (NC3Rs PhD student, University College London, £10,000)
• Ines Moura (NC3Rs/BBSRC Postdoctoral researcher, University of Leeds, £11,000)
• Katherine Pye (NC3Rs Technician, University of Exeter, £6,000)
• Liam Reed (NC3Rs/BBSRC Postdoctoral researcher, University of Nottingham, £15,000)
• Peyman Shadmani (NC3Rs/BBSRC Postdoctoral researcher, University of Exeter, £15,000)
• Zoe Speirs (NC3Rs PhD student, University of Sheffield, £1,100)
• Olga Tiurikova (NC3Rs Postdoctoral researcher, University College London, £15,000)