Minimising and improving animal use in the next decade

"Our Vision: 2015-2025" sets out the NC3Rs ambition for the next ten years, in five inter-related areas; Practice, Procedures, People, Places and Policy.

The publication is now available to view and download.

Funding Panel vacancies

We are inviting applications from leading scientists to join the NC3Rs funding panels for grants, studentships and fellowships from January 2015.

The person specification and application form can be found on our Funding Panel vacancies webpage

Project Grant applications opening soon

Our 2015 Project Grant scheme opens for applications later this month. Project grants support the development of new 3Rs approaches and technologies. This year we have £1.8 million to award. Awards are for up to 36 months with the amount requested dependent on the science.

The outline submission form will be available to download from Je-S from 22 October 2014. The deadline for submitting outlines is 21 January 2015.

OECD launches its knowledge base on Adverse Outcome Pathways

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched the Adverse Outcome Pathway Knowledge Base on 25 September. This joint initiative between the OECD, U.S Environmental Protection Agency and the European Commission Joint Research Centre is a web-based platform which aims to use crowd-sourcing to bring together all the knowledge on how chemicals can induce adverse effects, providing a focal point for AOP development and dissemination as well as potential replacement of some toxicity studies using animals.

Calling for 3Rs Prize nominations

The international NC3Rs Prize is now open for applications. The prize recognises a piece of research published in the last three years which has a 3Rs impact on the use of animals in the life sciences. The prize consists of a grant of £18k, plus a personal award of £2k. Highly-commended entries receive a £4k grant and £1k personal award. The deadline for applications is 5 December 2014.

Job opportunities at the NC3Rs

• Toxicology and Regulatory Sciences (Human Health) Programme Manager – IRC164420
  Maternity cover – fixed term contract or secondment opportunity
  Salary – circa £40k per annum including location allowances
  London NW1 1
  
  We are seeking an experienced individual to work with international regulatory bodies and the chemical, agrochemical, consumer products and pharmaceutical industries to develop and implement 3Rs strategies which also improve or advance human health risk assessments. The successful candidate will be responsible for delivering our programme of work in Adverse Outcome Pathways and human-based risk assessment.
  
  Application deadline: Monday 17 November, 5pm.
  
  Find out more
   
• Research Officer (CRACK IT) – IRC163794
  Salary – circa £25k per annum including location allowances
  London NW1
  
  We are seeking an experienced individual to support the CRACK IT programme. This is a varied role which involves managing applications, arranging review panel meetings and post-award management including managing agreements, tracking project progress and payments throughout the lifecycle of the award. The role is also responsible for the delivery of the annual launch event.
  
  Application deadline: Monday 3 November, 5pm.
  
  Find out more
   

Animal Science Meeting 2014
5 December 2014 - LONDON

Applications are invited for the Animal Science Meeting 2014, hosted by the Home Office (ASRU) and the Animal Science Group of the Society of Biology. A mix of talks, panel discussions and workshops will address issues around openness on animal research, experimental designs, publication of negative results and the implementation of ARRIVE guidelines.

Capacity at the venue is limited. To apply for your place, please contact asg@societyofbiology.org no later than 21 October 2014.

Modelling Microbial Infection
17-18 November 2014 - LONDON

Modelling Microbial Infection is a Society of General Microbiology-led meeting on new models for bacterial, viral, fungal and parasite infections. The conference will be looking at alternatives to animal models or improved approaches to using animal models for studying immunity and for drug discovery. The NC3Rs will be hosting a one hour session at the meeting.

2014 CRACK IT Challenge deadline

This year's CRACK IT Challenges: QSARs Mix: To use existing toxicological data repositories to develop in silico tools to predict toxicology endpoints for substances of interest. Targeting off-targets: To develop novel approaches to address the potential human safety issues arising from chemicals interacting with 'off-target' receptors. Neuratect: To generate physiologically-relevant human stem cell-based models to identify neurotoxicity.

Application deadline: 19 November 2014.

New Solution: partners sought

Developing a multi-organ toxicity testing assay in zebrafish
ZeClinics is seeking partners to help develop and validate their ZeGlobalTox medium/high-throughput preclinical zebrafish embryo screen capable of identifying compounds with potential cardiac, hepato- and neurotoxicity liabilities in the same animal.

New Solution: partners sought

An in silico model to optimise drug development regimens for clinical cancer studies
Physiomics plc is seeking partners with access to clinical pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamics and tumour growth data, ideally from individual patients to calibrate their new Virtual Tumour Clinical in silico model to reduce animal use in optimising drug treatment regimens.

CRACK IT Solutions partnership

Ostara are the latest organisation to be awarded funding through CRACK IT Solutions to work with the Cancer Research UK Transgenic Service to evaluate and further refine their original pessary for inducing pseudopregnancy in the transgenic mouse breeding process.

Find our most recent posts, along with our back catalogue here.

Launching Our Vision

"Our Vision 2015-2025" was launched at an afternoon event in London attended by over 150 of our stakeholders. See photographs from the event.

NC3Rs at the British Science Festival 2014

Photographs from our session at this year's British Science Festival: Keeping a watchful eye on animal behaviour.

Public attitudes to animal research

Dr Vicky Robinson takes a look at the findings of the most recent Ipsos MORI poll on current public opinion on the use of animals in research.