Tech3Rs: Issue 20 (May 2025)

Having celebrated our 20-year anniversary last year, this 20^th issue of Tech3Rs felt like a good opportunity to look back at our work over this time. Since 2004, work funded or led by the NC3Rs has advanced understanding of laboratory animal welfare, improved standards for housing and husbandry and developed approaches to monitor and minimise suffering across a wide range of species, disease models and research settings.

Animal technicians have been central to the success of many of these projects, developing resources, recommendations and refined approaches that are used by those working on-the-ground to implement and advance the 3Rs. These include projects evaluating environmental enrichment, breeding and colony management, malocclusion in mice, playpens for rats and using low-stress approaches to handling. Technical staff have contributed their expertise to our working groups and taken key roles in developing and promoting refinements for specific procedures and research areas. From mice used in diabetes research to zebrafish undergoing genotyping and training of rodents in behavioural studies, these refinements have spanned multiple disciplines and species. 

We would like to thank all of the technicians who have contributed to our work over the past 20 years. We will continue to provide platforms, like this newsletter, to allow you to share your experiences, celebrate your successes and keep up to date with our latest news, events and resources for the community. 

We caught up with two of our previous Tech3Rs champions, Alicia Kinally and Zoe Windsor, to find out what they have been up to since they were featured and their plans for the future.

Alicia Kinally’s refinements to rabbit handling at the University of Leicester were featured in Tech3Rs in July 2022.

“Being a Tech3Rs champion really helped my career as it gave me confidence in the value of my work and drove me to communicate this with other technicians.”

Alicia, remind us what your Tech3Rs-featured work was about? 

The motivation behind this work was that I wanted to change the way with which rabbits were handled for health checks, procedures and general husbandry. Traditionally this would involve a technician leaning into the cage to catch them before grasping them by the scruff and securely carrying them to their destination with their weight fully supported from below. However, as in the wild rabbits are prey animals, I realised that this type of handling might be stressful for them. Inspired by tunnel handling in mice, I wanted to explore whether the rabbits could be trained to co-operate and voluntarily enter a transport box.  

For video guidance on handling and lifting rabbits, including footage of Alicia transporting a rabbit using the method described here, visit our rabbit housing and husbandry page.

Has your approach been taken up by others in Leicester? 

When I introduced this refined approach, some people did not think that the handling would affect the rabbits’ behaviour, but when they saw how much calmer the rabbits were when trained to enter the transport box, everyone was happy to adopt the new way of handling. Since the article on training rabbits to hop into a transport box was published in Tech3Rs, this approach has been fully adopted by all technicians, researchers and the NVS at the University of Leicester.

We also invited technicians from another facility to observe the box handling method, who were impressed with how easily and quickly the rabbits were jumping in the box.

How has your work been shared since we last spoke?

Over the last two years, there has been a lot of interest in my work and I have been invited to give numerous talks on my refined rabbit handling approach, including the IAT/NC3Rs Animal Technician Symposium and the IAT Congress in 2023.  

I feel honoured to that my work and commitment to animal welfare has been formally acknowledged. I won the 2023 IAT Andrew Blake Award, given to animal technicians who have made significant contributions to improving laboratory animal welfare. I also won the top prize at the 2023 IAT North West branch poster day, as well as the University of Leicester Technician of the year award. Through these awards, I was able to attend AALAS 2023 in Salt Lake City where I presented my work to an international audience. 

I am very proud of what I have achieved over the last few years. I am delighted that my work has helped refine rabbit care and that I have been able to share its success with colleagues so it can be implemented in other facilities. 

How has being a Tech3Rs champion helped you?

Most importantly of all it gave me confidence in the value my own work. People have approached me after reading the article to find out more and to congratulate me for my work. I would highly recommend animal technicians who are involved in welfare work, no matter the scale, to reach out to the NC3Rs and have their story featured in Tech3Rs.

“It feels good to know that I have done something to improve the welfare of our rabbits, especially because this is a refinement they can benefit from daily.”   

Zoe Windsor was our Tech3Rs champion in August 2019, sharing her work at UCL’s Institute of Neurology to identify the most suitable nesting material for mice with head implants.

“It made a huge difference for me having the support and guidance from the NC3Rs. Sharing your work in Tech3Rs is a great first step and I recommend animal technicians reach out to get involved.”

Zoe, remind us what your Tech3Rs-featured work was about? 

I wanted to investigate the safety of different nesting materials, as alternatives to shredded paper, for mice with head implants. I started this project because I would often find mice with shredded paper wrapped around their implants. Sometimes they were so tangled up that they were completely immobile, which was highly stressful for them. I wanted to explore whether it was possible for implanted mice to safely construct high quality nests with alternative materials without getting tangled. I found that Pure Comfort White was the best alternative to shredded paper. I published the results of my study in the journal Heliyon, “Assessing the safety and suitability of nesting material for singly house mice with surgically fitted head plates”.

Has your approach been taken up by others at UCL? 

Since I was featured in Tech3Rs my approach has been fully taken up at the Institute of Neurology and I’ve had the opportunity to further expand my work. I ran a follow-up trial on composite nesting for mice with head implants, where I investigated whether a combination of nesting materials would be superior in terms of safety and nest quality compared to each material used individually. This follow-up work showed that a combination of Pure Comfort White and Nestlet performed better than the individual nesting materials. I completed this study in 2021 and the results were published in the Animal Technology and Welfare (ATW) journal, “Refinements in head plate mouse nesting: using composite nests to enhance welfare”.

What’s next for your welfare work? 

I am currently working on writing general husbandry guidelines for mice with cranial implants, which will include general advice on pre- and post-op considerations, enrichment, handling and other welfare-related topics.
My plan is to continue investigating refinements for animals with cranial implants, and possibly start to look at other models. I really enjoy doing the trials and writing the papers when time permits! I also continue to lead the UCL Welfare Trials group, supporting other technicians who wish to conduct their own welfare trials.

We have just completed a further welfare trial at UCL looking at the suitability, and enrichment value, of using biodegradable dishes instead of placing wet mash in plastic weigh boats. The plastic weight boats are an issue as the rodents often ate them! Datesand provided us with samples of a new type of sustainable dish so that we could conduct some welfare trials. I had an amazing response from our UCL NACWO forum and six facilities across UCL were involved in these trials assessing the new dishes for both rats and mice.  I was particularly pleased to see some of the younger technicians getting involved in this initiative. Our team will be presenting a poster of this study at IAT congress in March and this will be followed by publication of the work in the ATW journal. If I can secure funding, I also plan to present the work at the FELASA 2025 meeting in Athens. 

How did you get your message out to technicians beyond your colleagues at UCL? 

I first presented my work on identifying the most suitable nesting material for mice with head implants at the IAT Congress in 2018, where I was given the First Time Presenter Award. Since then, I have displayed posters and given multiple presentations at events in the UK and overseas, including IPAM 3Days for 3Rs. In 2021, I won the Andrew Blake Tribute Award, given to animal technicians who have made significant contributions to improving laboratory animal welfare, in recognition of my effort to improve the welfare of head-implanted mice. In 2024, I won the AAALAC International Fellowship, an award given to individuals who have made significant contributions to the field of laboratory animal care and use. This fellowship gave me the opportunity to visit Washington DC to share my experiences with colleagues working at animal facilities there, before attending the AALAS conference in Nashville.  

How has being a Tech3Rs champion helped you?

Acknowledgement from the NC3Rs certainly helped with my confidence and gave me some assurance that there was value in what I was doing, which in turn motivated me to continue! Although posters and presentations are a great way to talk about your work, being featured in Tech3Rs makes you more relatable to other animal technicians as it is a magazine published specifically for them.  

I know that people are often reluctant to present their work through a presentation or a poster and as a result sharing knowledge among animal technicians is slow. However, having your work featured in Tech3Rs is an easier approach, as it only involves an informal chat with NC3Rs staff who are really helpful with putting the article together and guiding you on how to talk about your work in an impactful and engaging way. Sharing your work in Tech3Rs is a great first step and I would highly recommend to animal technicians who are just starting their journey and do not have the experience to present their work in a more formal way, to reach out to the NC3Rs. 

“My findings have been used to improve the enrichment regime of the unit.”

Our public engagement awards are open for applications from anyone working to advance the 3Rs within UK research institutions. Those involved in caring for animals are trusted sources of information on animal research by the public, but support for public engagement activities, including training and funding, is typically focused on researchers. Last year to celebrate our 20-year anniversary we opened our public engagement awards to anyone working to advance the 3Rs, regardless of their role, and increased the funding available for each project to £2k. Almost a third (31%) of our 20-year anniversary public engagement awards involved animal facility staff, including technicians, vets and named persons. In half of these, animal facility staff were the lead applicant, which we were really pleased about.

At the University of Strathclyde, Linda Horan (Manager of the Biomedical Procedures Unit and Named Animal Care and Welfare Officer) secured funding for public groups to visit the animal facility, meet staff and learn about the 3Rs through hands-on activities. This included students, aged 16 to 18, from under-resourced schools who would otherwise not be able to access learning and engagement opportunities at the university. Students toured the facility, meeting staff and seeing animals and examples of the 3Rs in practice. All students reported a better understanding about the use of animals in medical research after the visit and 90% said they understood the importance of the 3Rs, recalling examples of refinements including a rat play pen and the chick embryo model used as a partial replacement for mice in cancer research. Linda and the team also welcomed families at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy & Biomedical Sciences Open Doors Day and the Scottish Universities’ Explorathon festival with interactive demos including learning how to ‘health check’ model mice and building their own refined rodent cage, alongside talking to techs and the NVS (institutional vet in the UK) about their day-to-day work. In total University of Strathclyde facility staff and scientists have shared 3Rs information and experiences with almost 500 people, from pre-schoolers to pensioners.

Animal facility staff and researchers at the University of Bristol have collaborated to immerse school children and families in the lives of laboratory rodents. Chris Handley (NVS) and Carole Furieux (lecturer in behavioural physiology) created an immersive experience of the refinements found in a typical lab rodent home-cage. Their experience includes activities such as foraging (in a ball pit), exercise (with a skipping rope) and nest building material (in a tent) for visitors to experience hands-on how refined housing improves lab animal welfare. Favourite activities include the rodent vision simulator, which uses a dichromatic video feed to let visitors experience how mice and rats see colour, and recordings of ultrasonic vocalisations where participants learned to distinguish between ‘happy’, ‘sad’ and ‘laughing’ rats. These activities allow visitors to understand how technicians and scientists consider the unique sensory experiences of animals to maximise their welfare. The pair has welcomed over 400 people so far, with plans for more festivals and fairs in the future.

Building on the success of projects supported by our 20-year anniversary awards, this year our assessment criteria specifically considers whether proposed projects provide opportunities for animal technicians to take part in public engagement and develop their communication skills. We provide support throughout the process, from discussing ideas to completing the application form and post-award advice on communicating the 3Rs and engaging with public audiences. The funding is available throughout the year with applications reviewed quarterly by the NC3Rs Office. To secure your funding this Summer, apply by Monday 23 June.

In March, we welcomed 30 people to our workshop at IAT Congress. The workshop covered the importance of effective communication for animal technicians and tips for talking about 3Rs advances with different audiences, alongside plenty of time for peer-to-peer learning and discussion. Before the workshop attendees rated their confidence in communicating 3Rs work as 5/10, increasing to 8/10 after the session. Technicians shared their challenges and successes of communicating 3Rs work within and between animal facilities and raising the profile of their 3Rs work in institutions. Some common themes from these discussions were:

• Influencing ‘changemakers’ – getting the right people on board with 3Rs advances can set an example, convince more people of the benefits and drive wider change.
• Connecting researchers and animal facility staff to share perspectives, experiences and learning – breaking down perceived/actual barriers between academic and facility staff and/or animal users/non-animal users.
• Networking between animal technicians to disseminate advances to other facilities – both formally through presentations and publications, but not overlooking the importance of informal conversations and chances to connect with peers.
• Demonstrating value of the 3Rs can go beyond animal welfare and better science – messages around cost and efficiency savings associated with 3Rs methods may be most effective to engage institutional management.
• A ‘little but often’ approach can normalise conversations around the 3Rs and help people fit this into their working day – for example, short presentations over lunchtime sessions as an informal forum to discuss the 3Rs on a regular basis.

Validating the underpinnings of water corticosterone measurement for aquatic amphibians

There is a lack of quantitative evidence to support the management and welfare of amphibians in research environments. This paper describes a robust set of guidelines for a refined non-invasive method to measure stress hormones in frogs. The authors validate a protocol to measure the stress hormone corticosterone from tank water to use as a welfare assessment tool in Xenopus laevis. Importantly they found that repeated transfer of frogs to sampling containers did not increase corticosterone levels, indicating that this method is not cumulatively stressful. The approach can be used to identify husbandry practices associated with lower stress indicators leading to improved welfare. Improving amphibian welfare produces more reliable and reproducible scientific data enhancing the quality of research.

Validation of a refined protocol for mouse oral glucose tolerance testing without gavage

The glucose tolerance test (GTT) is used in rodent models of diabetes. This paper describes a refined protocol for mouse GTT using voluntary oral glucose dosing. Most commonly glucose is administered to rodents through intraperitoneal injection, but GTT oral gavage may also be used. Oral gavage is more physiologically relevant than intraperitoneal injection as it integrates the gastrointestinal tract, but does not recapitulate the voluntary consumption of glucose in the human clinical setting as it bypasses early glucose-sensing via the mouth and associated physiological responses. Oral gavage is also stressful for mice, which can itself increase blood glucose levels. The authors have developed a non-invasive method for the rodent GTT using micropipette-guided drug administration. The refined method better reflects the human clinical setting, avoids the need for water deprivation and reduces stress for mice. Voluntary consumption of glucose from a micropipette is associated with lower circulating stress hormone levels compared to oral gavage, improving animal welfare and minimising the confounding effect of stress on mouse glucose homeostasis.

Applying the 3Rs to urinalysis assessments in toxicity studies: refining procedures and adopting a case‑by‑case approach

Urinalysis is common in regulatory toxicity studies and may also be used in preclinical research to provide information on kidney function. Urine sample collection is typically considered a non-invasive procedure but usually involves housing within a metabolism cage for protracted periods. This is associated with a number of welfare concerns including: single housing of animals, grid floors, limited size leading to restricted movement and food and/or water restriction. This paper summarises a workshop discussing the value of urinalysis data and opportunities to refine urine sample collection. Metabolism cages can be furnished with resting platforms made from polycarbonate to protect animals from grid floors, while using glass or plastic metabolism bowls for rodents allows visual contact with other animals. For dogs, some facilities have adopted temporary catheterisation under local anaesthesia as an alternative to metabolism cages – while a licensed procedure, this is a quick urine collection and then the dog is returned to the social home cage environment. For rodents, GSK have validated the use of hydrophobic sand that allows urine to be collected from on top. For non-human primates, ‘catch collection’ can be performed in an area at the back of the group housing which the animals have been trained to enter, with the animal released as soon as the sample is obtained.

Amphibian care and welfare 

There are currently no standardised approaches for establishing husbandry best practices and methods to assess amphibian welfare. This joint webinar, hosted with the RSPCA Animals in Science department, features presentations from a number of experts on refining the use of amphibians in research and amphibian-specific welfare indicators.

Staying informed on advances in the 3Rs and animal research 

Would you like to be more effective in searching for and keeping up to date with 3Rs-related information? This webinar provides an overview of where to look for information, how library services can support your searches and how to keep on top of advances in 3Rs using alerts and social media.

Introducing the ARRIVE study plan

The ARRIVE study plan provides a clear and standardised framework to record and communicate individual in vivo studies. It includes all procedural and welfare details, and technicians and animal units can use the resource for record keeping, monitoring compliance and identifying opportunities to support rigorous science that minimises the use of animals.

We are launching a webinar series focused on evidence-based welfare refinements for laboratory animals. Aimed at everyone working with research animals, the series highlights topics with practical relevance to support positive change in day-to-day practice.

Improving the lives of laboratory zebrafish

Wednesday 18 June, 14.00 – 15.00 (BST)
In the first session, Professor Robert Gerlai from the University of Toronto Mississauga will explore how optimising housing and his award-winning work on handling methods can improve both zebrafish welfare and research data quality.