Bernhard Voelkl from UniBE receives 2021 3Rs Award
The Swiss 3RCC has awarded Bernhard Voelkl from the Vetsuisse Faculty of the University of Bern the 2021 3Rs Award in recognition of his work supporting researchers to better design animal studies to improve research quality and reduce animal use. The 2021 3Rs Young Investigator Award went to Pauline Zamprogno from the ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research, also at the University of Bern, for her contribution to a lung-on-chip model, which aim at replacing animals testing. With their research the awardees not only help promote the 3Rs principle, which aims to replace, reduce and refine animal experiments, they communicated their projects in an exemplary manner to encourage other researchers to adopt these novel approaches in their work.
Bernhard Voelkl and his colleagues at the Animal Welfare Division of the Veterinary Public Health Institute recommend that scientists introduce biological variation such as different mouse strains, sex or housing conditions into their animal experiments to improve the quality and reproducibility of their results. Traditionally animal studies are conducted under highly standardized laboratory conditions, which was meant to improve their quality. Paradoxically, such studies are more difficult to replicate by other scientists. Adding variability allows researchers to improve the reproducibility and translatability of their results. This ultimately means that fewer animals are wasted for research that ends up being inconclusive because its design was not optimal.
The jury consisted of independent external reviewers from the Charité 3Rs (Berlin, DE) and the North American 3Rs Collaborative/University of Washington (USA) as well as a representative of the Swiss Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO). The jurors emphasised the importance of comprehensive communication as demonstrated by the award winners. The 3Rs Award 2021 and Young 3Rs Investigator Award recipients will receive CHF 4,000 and CHF 1,000 respectively to support their studies. Furthermore, they will get the opportunity to present their awarded research at the Swiss 3Rs Day 2022 and in a featured video.
Watch the interview video here.
References:
Publications
· Voelkl et al., (2021): The standardization fallacy. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-020-01036-9
· Voelkl et al., (2020): Reproducibility of animal research in light of biological variation. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-020-0313-3
· Voelkl et al., (2018): Reproducibility of preclinical animal research improves with heterogeneity of study samples. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2003693
· Voelkl et al., 2016): Reproducibility crisis: Are we ignoring reaction norms? https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tips.2016.05.003