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Centro 3R Responsible animal testing: Centro 3R set up in Italy. The Universities of Genoa and Pisa have recently set up in Italy Centro 3R-Interuniversitary Center for the Promotion of the Principles of the 3Rs in Teaching and Research, a new initiative on the Italian academic scenario which aims at starting a process for raising awareness of students, researchers and teachers of responsible experimentation and alternative methods to animal testing.

The 3Hs initiative focuses on housing, handling, and habituation of laboratory rodents with methods which increase their positive affective experiences and reduce cumulative suffering.​  This initiative was established to support the refinement of research involving laboratory rodents. The framework not only considers methods which can reduce negative experiences but also methods which can enhance their positive affective experiences.

Responsible Research in Practice is a UK registered learning provider.

Responsible Research in Practice hold FREE monthly live webinar series, provide bespoke in-house training courses and workshops all with CPD. The website hosts many recorded webinars that are free and pm-demand.

They work with a range of academic, commercial and other life science research sector organisations based around the world. They are open to collaborate with individuals and organisations with whom they have a shared interest so please do reach out to contact us if this is of interest.

It is the mission of AALAE to promote, educate, and foster an open communication, while providing a resource to the lab animal community regarding behavior management and enrichment practices.  We intend to advance lab animal welfare by providing resources to all lab animal facilities on cost effective options to better the psychological health of laboratory animals.

The new TEATIME consortium will bring together researchers to improve how animal behaviour research is performed. 

• The consortium will investigate ways to develop the use of 24/7 monitoring using methods, including videos and tracking of small sensor-implanted animals in their home-cages, to describe their behaviour.
• Home-cage monitoring will reduce the need to remove animals for short-term testing in unfamiliar environments, which can alter or mask behaviours and cause variability depending on the surroundings they are moved to.

TEATIME was founded by 58 researchers in 23 countries, but the early goals are to expand this to a network of 500 behavioural research scientists, manufacturers of equipment, bioinformaticians and experts in Machine Learning to form a collaborative, multidisciplinary consortium. Together they will:

• Address issues such as the diversity of equipment available, complementarity of protocols and common formats for analysis and presentation of results to enable results to be more cross-comparable. 
• Assess current needs in regard to development of new bioinformatics tools, such as:
  • Ontologies (a form of controlled vocabulary) to describe behaviours
  • Analysis of large volumes of data
  • Tools such as Machine Learning to automatically describe or quantify behaviours to reduce the need for lengthy time spent watching videos.

The ultimate goal is to be able to describe animal behaviours with a minimum impact on the animals, by monitoring them in the home-cages where they live, enabling them to exhibit routine behaviours in a familiar environment.

Addressing animal welfare

Animal use for scientific purposes is guided by the principles of 3Rs (Reduction, Refinement and Replacement). A broader use of home-cage monitoring will contribute to:

• Developing refined experimental conditions can substantially improve animal welfare and, importantly, data reproducibility and translational value.
• Home-cage monitoring also offers welfare advantages in that animals remain in their own environments, so are not subject to stresses of being moved to testing arenas.
• The 24/7 nature of the home-cage monitoring may pick up welfare issues of animals that otherwise might be missed, leading to better welfare outcomes.