Summaries of 2021 research
Lay summaries of research that involved animals in 2021.
As part of the Concordat on Openness on Animal Research in the UK, we provide lay summaries of research that involves animals for all new granted project licences.
Studying the effects of potential new drugs for the treatment of mental health disorders on brain function
What animals are you planning to use?
Mice and rats.
For what purpose are the animals going to be used?
To evaluate whether new compounds have an effect on brain function that means they can progress to the next stages of the drug discovery process.
What will be the harms to those animals and how will these be limited?
Animals will not suffer more than the discomfort of receiving an injection of the test compound. To study the effects of the compounds on brain function, animals will need to be humanely killed so that detailed analysis of the brain can be conducted.
What alternatives did you consider before embarking on the use of animals in your research?
Wherever possible, studies will be conducted in test-tubes or cell culture model systems to characterise novel compounds. Indeed, most novel compounds are tested in such systems and never progress into testing in live animals. However, because of the inability of test-tube, cell culture or computer-based model systems to predict the complexities of the brain there remains no substitute for testing a relatively small number of compounds in live animals.
What will be the expected benefits?
The ultimate benefits will be new treatments for patients suffering from mental health disorders for which there are either no currently effective treatments or existing drugs have limited efficacy and/or possess serious side effects.
Fish-Pathogen Interactions
What animals are you planning to use?
Fish and associated pathogens, which cause infectious diseases.
For what purpose are the animals going to be used?
Infectious diseases present one of the biggest challenges to the sustainable growth of aquaculture, they threaten endangered fish stocks and negatively impact fish welfare. Studying these pathogens will help us develop tools to reduce their impact on fish stocks.
What will be the harm to those animals and how will these be limited?
All fish are naturally infected by the parasites that we study, and the clinical signs can be mild or serious. Fish will be monitored at least once daily. For some infections, disease can be treated but for others not.
What alternatives did you consider before embarking on the use of animals in your research?
Obligate parasites cannot survive for any length of time away from the host, and all parasites, at least to a certain degree, are host specific. Therefore, to study pathogens where in vitro maintenance is not possible, the only option is to work with the specific hosts that are naturally infected with the pathogen.
What will be the expected benefits?
Develop new tools for early disease diagnoses; improve understanding of how specific pathogens impact their hosts at individual and population levels in the presence or absence of other stressors; and identify dietary supplements and putative control measures that can improve fish health.
Modelling cancer biology and therapy in mice
What animals are you planning to use?
Mice.
For what purpose are the animals going to be used?
To study the development and progression of cancer in mouse models of solid tumours and to test new therapeutic strategies in these mouse models.
What will be the harms to those animals and how will these be limited?
Mice will either be genetically modified to promote the development of tumours within specific tissues, or tumour cells will be transplanted into recipient mice. In both instances, mice will develop tumours and in some instances these tumours may spread to vital organs. The harmful effects of these tumours will be minimised by using genetic modifications or transplant procedures that limit the timing, size and distribution of the tumours. Where possible tumours are also ‘tagged’ so that they can be scanned and traced over time to ensure that experiments can be terminated before the tumours cause undue suffering to the animals.
What alternatives did you consider before embarking on the use of animals in your research?
We routinely perform our tumour cell studies in flasks at the laboratory bench prior to any studies involving animals. The mouse tumour studies are used as a last resort to confirm the observations in the laboratory in a more clinically relevant setting. This minimises the number of exploratory experiments in mice.
What will be the expected benefits?
This work will demonstrate how certain cancers grow and spread around the body and we are already identifying new treatment strategies to target some tumour types, approaches that we are continuing to develop for clinical trials in patients.
Lay summaries by year
Consideration of the 3Rs is the basis of everything we do related to animal research.