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Friday, 15 October 2021 17:05

New Einstein Center 3R (EC3R) to build trust in 3R research among the scientific community and the public Featured

On July 1, the Einstein Center 3R was launched in Berlin. Its goal is to contribute to reduce or replace animal testing in certain areas of biomedical research with in vitro methods. It will initially be funded with around 5.3 million euros from the Einstein Foundation until the end of 2026. We spoke with the EC3R's head of communications and public relations, Prof. Dr. Jens Kurreck, about the center's tasks and goals.

InVitro+Jobs:
Professor Kurreck: A center called Einstein - do any particularly innovative ideas come together here?

Professor Kurreck:
Yes, we hope so. The background to the name is that there is the Einstein Foundation located in Berlin. This foundation, which is funded by the Berlin Senate, has set itself the goal of promoting excellent research projects in Berlin across all institutions. Thus, there is no building that now houses a new 3R Center. Rather, working groups from various Berlin research institutions, i.e. the universities of Berlin, the Max Delbrück Center, the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, the Robert Koch Institute, etc. are linked together with a mission to develop new, innovative strategies for 3D organ models.

InVitro+Jobs:
What has happened since the beginning of July?

Professor Kurreck:
Of course, a new initiative always needs a certain start-up phase, during which, for example, financial contracts are signed and other formalities are completed. At a general meeting, we have elected a steering committee and confirmed the spokespersons. Stefan Hippenstiel from Charité is the spokesperson of the center and coordinates the research, Christa Thöne-Reinecke from the Free University of Berlin is the co-spokesperson and coordinator for teaching, and I, representing the Technical University of Berlin, am co-spokesperson and coordinator for communication.

Fortunately, however, we have also already worked on content. For example, a recently published study on a 3D lung model for infection research has already incorporated collaborative work of the Einstein Center between Charité groups and our group at Technical University Berlin. Thus, the research groups are already finding each other. Courses on the 3R principles are planned for the winter semester, and we have also started public relations work in podcasts (NDR), radio contributions (Deutschlandfunk), and magazine articles (Stern). We have conceptualized a lecture and panel event on new methods for less animal testing for the Berlin Science Week, for which films have already been made in three participating laboratories. https://berlinscienceweek.com/event/neue-methoden-fur-weniger-tierversuche-so-forscht-berlin/

 

An innovative new research center - Albert Einstein would certainly have been pleased.
Photograph by Ferdinand Schmutzer, 1921


InVitro+Jobs:
It is said on your website: "To promote 3R research, 3R methods must gain acceptance in the scientific community itself." as well as "The goal of the Einstein Center 3R (EC3R) is to promote the trustworthiness of 3R research in the scientific community and the public." What acceptance and trust issues are we talking about here? Is it about the reproducibility of results or lack of confidence of regulatory authorities in new animal-free methods?

Professor Kurreck:
This topic is multi-layered. First of all, we have a general reproducibility crisis in the sciences, which also applies to 3D organ models and organoids. Therefore, in addition to the research projects on the individual 3D organ models, we have a cross-sectional project that deals with reproducibility. It is called 6R, because in addition to Replace, Reduce, Refine, Robustness, Registration, and Reporting* are also important.
With better and reproducible 3D models, we want to create confidence among other scientists who currently base their knowledge on animal experiments and to whom we also want to demonstrate the potential of alternative methods.

Finally, of course, regulatory authorities are also important; they usually have great persistence and need to be convinced from both the potential and the reliability of animal-free methods.

InVitro+Jobs:
The challenges of alternative methods would often be underestimated. Is this a matter of critically educating the public about the performance of new animal-free methods or, for example, the need for better and more long-term funding?

Professor Kurreck:
Educating the public, including politicians, is a central task. In doing so, it is important for us to point out not only the capabilities but also the limitations that still exist. And that leads to the second point you raised: We are already thinking about how we can continue to finance research when the Einstein Center expires in six years at the latest. How can we make the funding for 3R research more permanent? For example, would an institute for 3R research at one of Berlin's universities be desirable? Or would this just be too inflexible? We have already started the discussion process here.

InVitro+Jobs:
Why is there a need for improved quality management?

Professor Kurreck:
As long as everyone is crafting their own 3D organ model and there are no quality standards, research will not lead to reproducible and generally accepted results. We definitely need standards for the cell types used, the culture management, the three-dimensional structure... Only then will we be able to compare results between different groups and, above all, draw comparisons with physiology in living organisms, especially in humans.

InVitro+Jobs:
The EC3R aims to develop robust alternative methods that can be applied by a broad range of users. What is meant by the broad user group? Should processes be made available free of charge fit-for-purpose to research and industry?

Professor Kurreck:
At EC3R, there are six central research groups working on organ models for the brain, lung, liver, heart, intestine and neuromuscular tissue. We would then like to offer these improved organ models to scientific partners who, for example, would like to conduct infection studies with a virus and have been doing so in animal models so far and would now perhaps also do so on an excellent lung model.

I have just personally established contacts with the industry. I consider this to be extremely important. I myself was amazed at the openness. If a drug fails in a clinical trial because there are suddenly toxic side effects due to species-specific differences that were not seen in the animal model, that is a financial disaster for the companies. Therefore, the pharmaceutical industry in particular needs physiologically relevant human models for drug development. And that's where it's important to get in touch early on to know what the requirements are.

InVitro+Jobs:
Research into alternative methods is intended to reduce and replace animal testing in the long term. For which areas is this targeted? For the still missing methods in toxicity testing, translational research and: does this also apply to basic research?

Professor Kurreck:
From the foregoing, it is probably apparent that all areas have a role to play, but have specific requirements. For toxicity testing, we need, among other things, an excellent human liver model. Here, everything is highly standardized. This is still true for translational research as well. It is particularly difficult in basic research, which is very diverse. Here, each biomedical group has its own special animal models. Thus, we need highly developed organ models as alternatives, which in the best case also interact with each other.

InVitro+Jobs:
There should be a comprehensive education and training program. Does that mean that students can do their master's thesis or a Ph.D. there, or are there plans, for example, for continuing education and training for employees of regulatory authorities and for members of animal experimentation-approving commissions?

Professor Kurreck:
There is no specific Master's or PhD program in EC3R, but the PhD students and junior scientists are to be networked. For this purpose, we have the Junior Group of EC3R. There should also be regular exchanges with scientific lectures. And teaching in the 3R area is to be coordinated. Christa Thöne-Reinecke already offers continuing education and training events and set up a webinar on the 3Rs years ago - before Corona (!). We can now intensify all this at the Einstein Center.

InVitro+Jobs:
Innovative applications of artificial intelligence are to be developed: That sounds very exciting. Can you tell us more about this?

Professor Kurreck:
In addition to the 6R project already mentioned, there is a second cross-sectional project on the topic of "Cross-species comparability and validity of disease models". Especially in imaging and analysis, artificial intelligence plays an increasingly important role in the evaluation.

InVitro+Jobs:
Extensive activities planned at EC3R. Are the 5.3 million euros from the Einstein Foundation sufficient here?

Professor Kurreck:
We are very grateful to the Einstein Foundation for funding our activities. But I don't know any scientist who has ever said, thank you very much, I have enough money for my research. So we also think that a real breakthrough in alternative methods would require yet another dimension of funding. But let's put these numbers in order: It was just reported in Nature (6.10.2021) about the large-scale projects for the research of the brain. For this, 6.6 billion dollars are available in the USA alone! That is the thousandfold. I think brain research is extremely important and exciting; but if you want to significantly advance 3Rs research, more money needs to be put into this as well.

InVitro+Jobs:
Thank you very much for the interview.

You can find more information about the EC3R here:
https://www.ec3r.org/de/ueber-ec3r

*6R: Replace, Reduce, Refine, Robustness, Registration, Reporting
Russel & Burch's (1959) 3Rs concept for the ethical use of animals in experiments, which targeted the replacement of animal experiments, the reduction of animal experiments, and in the other case the refinement of animal experimentation methods, was supplemented by Daniel Strech and Ulrich Dirnagl in 2018 with the guidelines Robust-ness, Registration and Reporting. They aim to ensure the scientific value of animal experiments so that the results are sufficiently robust (robustness), and to prevent the same questions that have already been answered from being researched again and again because the results of a research had not been registered and reported on. Strech D, Dirnagl U. 3Rs missing: animal research without scientific value is unethical. BMJ Open Science 2019;3:e000035. doi:10.1136/bmjos-2018-000048.