Since 1970, we have awarded 260 grants to projects that include research into cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, asthma, diabetes, kidney, heart and liver disease, to name only a few.
Each project we fund is a step along the road to completely replacing animals in medical research.
Some highlights of our work include:
- In 2012, we developed a programme of annual Summer Studentship grants to fund early career scientists. This has helped to embed the importance of animal free research with them at the start of their research careers.
- We hosted our first Animal Replacement Science Conference in 2014. These valuable events bring together scientists from different fields to share their work on replacing animals in medical research.
- In 2016, we launched our Animal Replacement Centre of Excellence at Queen Mary University of London. The focus of the centre will be on vital animal free research into skin, breast and prostate cancers.
- We have funded innovative research into cardiovascular treatments using Thiel embalmed human cadavers to replace animal use.
- We funded research that created an entirely new 3D model of human breast cancer – the first of its kind. This work will help replace mice with implanted tumours.
- We funded pioneering research using a MEG brain scanner, which allows safe human brain imaging and replaces invasive experiments on monkeys.
- Our funding helped in the development of computer models to predict how medicines behave in human patients, helping to replace tests in rabbits, mice, rats and dogs.
- We funded research on cultures of human cells that demonstrated how new drugs are delivered in patients.
