Join Animal Free Research UK in the fight against COVID-19

Join Animal Free Research UK in the fight against COVID-19

New crises need new solutions – and your support can help fund them. 

JANUARY 2022 – UPDATE

Animal Free Research UK funded scientists Professor Lorna Harries and Summer School protégé Merlin Davies from our Animal Replacement Centre (ARC2.0) at the University of Exeter have optimised a test that not only detects the Covid-19 virus in humans but can also identify if someone is still infectious with the disease.

During the drastic measures introduced in early 2020 to curb the Covid-19 pandemic, our clinical colleagues identified high levels of infection despite the public’s careful adherence to the isolation rules and guidelines.

They knew back then the conventional PCR and lateral flow tests could show a positive result long after an individual had stopped being infectious – so they wanted a better way to identify who is still infectious from who is not.

Thanks to you, our generous supporters, Animal Free Research UK funded Lorna and her team to examine how PCR testing identifies a part of the Covid-19 virus genome that is only present when the virus is actively dividing.

What they found somewhat shocked us.

Lorna’s study has found that 13 per cent of people still exhibited levels of active Covid-19 virus after 10 days, meaning they could potentially still be infectious. Some people retained these levels for up to 68 days.

Crucially, their results also show where the consequences of onward transmission would be a real issue.

Merlin says: “In some settings, such as people returning to care homes after illness, people continuing to be infectious after ten days could pose a serious public health risk. We may need to ensure people in those setting have a negative active virus test to ensure they are no longer infectious. We now want to conduct larger trials to investigate this further.”

Read the full press release

Animal free research techniques are successfully being used in the fight against Covid-19, paving the way for the new approach to testing and research that we all want – a kinder science.

And we couldn’t have done this without your ongoing support.

But we still urgently need donations to continue to fund pioneering animal free research such as the incredible work at the ARC 2.0 – to build a brighter future for both humans and animals.

APRIL 2020

Current COVID-19 tests only tell you if the virus is in your body – not whether you are still infectious.  

But Prof Lorna Harries and her team at our Animal Replacement Centre (ARC2.0) at the University of Exeter are currently optimising a test that could tell users not only whether they are carrying active virus, but also how much.

The current test for the COVID-19 virus includes ingredients derived from animals and detects only the presence of viral particles (which can be infectious or non-infectious). Lorna’s new test will be animal free as all animal-derived materials are replaced by synthetic equivalents.  

By using human tissue samples from COVID-19 infected people, Lorna and her team are able to make their research truly human relevant and detect the exact number of copies of active viral particles in a sample. 

This test has three major benefits. It will: 

1. Get healthcare workers back to work faster and safely 
2. Help predict how poorly people are likely to become 
3. Measure how effective emerging new treatments can be 

At the moment front-line medical staff are ‘flying blind’, having no option but to risk their lives and the lives of the people they’re caring for. 

The new test will be trialled on human patients with COVID-19 and the results compared with current methods of testing. 

Animal free research techniques are successfully being used in the fight against COVID-19, paving the way for the new approach to testing and research that we all want – a kinder science.

Read the full press release

Read Carla’s blog post about how this current crisis can also offer us hope for a better future.