Pounds 1m Bid to Cut Tests on Animals

Researchers from across the UK, including Cardiff, have been given pounds 1m in funding to try and help find alternatives to testing on animals.

Eight universities and company projects will benefit from the cash, which comes from an agency set up last year by the Government to look into ways of reducing animal experiments.

They include projects that are using new human cell methods to test drugs and carry out research in areas which currently involve the use of animals, often mice.

Lord Turnberg, board chairman of the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research, said the grants were ‘an excellent start’ for the organisation, which was set up less than a year ago.

But he accepted that dreams of a situation where animals were completely excluded from medical testing were a long way from becoming reality.

He said, ‘Most people in science would not use animals if they could, the problem is that animal experiments remain an important part and in many ways the only way of doing a particular part of research.

‘We recognise that for the foreseeable future animal testing will be a requirement – indeed it is a legal requirement in some cases.’

One team will use their grant to further research into leg ulcers suffered by diabetics, an area which sometimes suffered from ‘sub- standard’ testing using animals, according to one scientist.

Dr Phil Stephens, from Cardiff University, said his team hoped to develop techniques of medical research based on using human cells from ulcer sufferers. ‘We are looking at ways to ‘immortalise’ these cells so that we have a continuing stock of cells for development,’ he said.