The European Partnership for Alternatives to Animal Testing (EPAA) aims to promote the development, validation and acceptance of 3Rs alternative approaches (replacement, reduction and refinement of testing on animals). The 3Rs science prize is granted every two years to a scientist with an outstanding contribution to 3Rs. We want to promote positive contributions from industry or academia and encourage more scientists to focus their research on the 3Rs goals.

Together with her team, Dr. Cindrilla Chumduri, group leader at the Department of Microbiology at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU), has developed organoids of the female cervix.

Dr. Beate Krämer and Dr. Heike Behrensdorf-Nicol, scientists from the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the Paul Ehrlich Institute, have won the Research Prize of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate for their research on the "Relevance of the Irreversibility Test for Tetanus Toxoids".

PETA Science Consortium International e.V., the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), and the Alternatives Research and Development Foundation (ARDF) are offering grants for free catalogue recombinant antibodies for use in research and testing.

A team of researchers from the Natural and Medical Sciences Institute in Reutlingen (NMI), together with colleagues from the Medical Faculty of the Tübingen University as well as from the Fraunhofer Institute IGB, has developed an obesity model on a chip. The model is called Mix & Match and integrates all important cellular components that can also be found in human white adipose tissue.

A cell-based neuropathy disease model on-chip developed by Hesperos Inc. in Florida and colleagues is able to successfully recapitulate the neurophysiological features of two rare autoimmune demyelinating neuropathies. Additionally, it has been shown that the model is suitable for assessing the efficacy of new therapeutics.

Scientists at the Technical University of Berlin and colleagues have successfully developed an in vitro approach of a human neuroblastoma in a surrounding human cellular environment and treated it with drugs. They succeeded in treating the metastasis. At the same time, they were able to observe the influence on the surrounding tissue.

Prof. Doris Wilflingseder from the Medical University of Innsbruck and Prof. Peter Ertl from the Vienna University of Technology were honored with the Austrian State Prize for the Promotion of Alternative Methods to Animal Experiments 2021.

Brain organoids in autism research

Monday, 11 April 2022 13:51

A team of researchers from Austria, Italy and the United States has developed brain organoids to better understand the causes of autism spectrum disorders. They observed in vitro how mutations of the gene CHD8 affect brain development.

Adjuvants amplify and adapt immune responses to administered vaccines. Dr. Laura Roßmann from the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI) received the first prize this year for her work investigating the effect of various adjuvants on the innate and the acquired immune system. She was able to show that a specific toll-like receptor agonist is best suited as an adjuvant.