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AAVS is excited to announce that the Alternatives Research & Development Foundation (ARDF), our affiliate, recently awarded $400,000 in grants to support innovative new methods to reduce or replace animals in research and testing. ARDF has provided over $5.3 million to projects advancing alternatives since 1993. Several projects focus on developing models to study human health and disease. At Michigan State University, scientists are using human-based heart organoids to study whether certain medications might cause congenital heart defects, while researchers at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center are developing a human-based model to study potential links between olfactory dysfunction and neurodegenerative diseases. Two projects at Johns Hopkins University will use organoids to study brain development and learning, and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, researchers will use human lung tissue to study pulmonary fibrosis. Other projects aim to improve drug development without animals. At Uppsala University in Sweden, scientists are studying growth conditions for cells used in pharmaceutical testing that do not use fetal bovine serum, which is collected from the fetuses of slaughtered cows. At the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia in Spain, researchers will use a neuroblastoma-on-a-chip model to monitor tumors and examine drug efficacy for treating pediatric cancers. At the University of Arizona, scientists will develop a model to study how a new method of focused ultrasound delivers medications to targeted locations in the brain, with the hope of new treatments for neurological diseases. “This year’s awards highlight the value of applying alternative methods in exciting and promising research areas,” said ARDF President Sue Leary. “I have seen stunning progress in this field and have no doubt that our support of new non-animal, human-relevant approaches is contributing to advances in biomedical research.”
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