Putting the 3Rs of Biomedical Research into Action
Apr 15 2013
The Charles River Animal Welfare department, together with scientists and laboratory animal specialists across our global facilities, has made recent strides in further integrating the 3Rs (refinement, reduction and replacement) into our operations. With first-hand knowledge of how to implement meaningful change, Charles River representatives are acting as ambassadors within the industry to elevate the importance of animal welfare in laboratory animal research.
The Charles River 3Rs initiative can be seen across our facilities in the form of specialized housing options, novel sampling and handling techniques and refined toxicology study designs. With a recently validated capillary microsampling technique and other methods successfully minimizing our animal use, we were pleased to sponsor and share our strategies at 20 3Rs-related events at the Society of Toxicology (SOT) ToxExpo™ last month. Explore our SOT poster reprints in our exclusive content portal, The Source℠ (login required), to learn more about how we can refine study design and performance to promote animal welfare. Additional research from our scientific staff will be presented in “Pharmaceutical Toxicology: Designing Studies to Reduce Animal Use, While Maximizing Human Translation,” to be published in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology later this year.
As we continue ongoing internal efforts, we recognize that the 3Rs is a conversation that must be had industry-wide in order to achieve its potential for change. Marilyn Brown, Vice President, Global Animal Welfare, was recently selected to represent Charles River in the 3Rs Leadership Group within the Consortium for Innovation and Quality in Pharmaceutical Development (IQ Consortium). The goal of the group is to promote mutual learning, enhance communication and encourage transparency and alignment in 3Rs implementation. We look forward to collaborating with our customers and other CROs in leveraging the 3Rs to enhance animal welfare while simplifying operations and reducing the cost of biomedical research.
We invite you to also share your 3Rs ideas, opinions, questions and struggles on Eureka, our online scientific community, where this month our scientists speak out on the 3Rs. Click here to join the conversation.
Related Information