The days of Alzheimer’s mouse models may be numbered: Researchers at the Harvard Medical School in Boston have developed a three-dimensional human cell culture model using human nerve cells. The aim is to find new useful drugs against the disease.

The scientists Dr. Alexander Mosig and Dr. Knut Rennert from the University Hospital Jena and Prof. Stefan Lorkowski from the Institute of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Jena have been awarded with the this year’s Thuringian Animal Welfare Prize 2014.

On November 14th the LUSH Company is hosting a conference in London. It will be discussed whether the 3R concept (reduce, refine, replace of animal experiments) developed by Russel & Burch in the 1950s “has had its day” or whether the new tox21 concept that entails a total replacement of animals, for instance using pathway-based approaches, is still so far off that 3R will stay relevant for many years to come.

Researchers from the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) led by Prof. Thomas Eschenhagen and colleagues from the UK and the Netherlands are going to use artificial heart cells to study whether it is possible to predict side effects of pharmaceuticals on the heart. That way animal experiments could be reduced or fully eliminated.