Webinar Series: Advancing Rodent Models and Welfare for Better Science

November 6th, 20th and 27th, 2024, 16:30-18:30 (CET)

The webinar series “Advancing Rodent Models and Welfare for Better Science” brings together experts to explore how ethical practices, environmental factors, and natural behaviors can enhance the rigor and validity of rodent research. Join us to gain actionable insights that will help advance both ethical standards and scientific rigor in rodent research, improving the quality and impact of your studies.

Dates: Wednesdays, November 6th (Session 1), 2024, November 20th (Session 2), 2024, and November 27th (Session 3), 2024.

Time: 16:30–18:30 (CET, Zurich) | 10:30 AM–12:30 PM (New York) | 8:00–10:00 PM (Bengaluru)

Certificate: Participants attending all 3 sessions will receive a 1-day continuing education certificate, and those attending 2 sessions will receive 0.5-day certification (accreditation is pending and will be valid for Switzerland).

 

To access the full program, click here.

 

Please sign up separately for each session:

-        Sign up here for Session 1

-        Sign up here for Session 2

-        Sign up here for Session 3

 

Session 1: Ensuring Scientific Rigor: Balancing Responsible Research and Laboratory Environmental Influences

This session explores how scientific rigor is essential in animal research, focusing on balancing the 3Rs (replace, reduce, refine) with validity (model, internal, and external). It emphasizes how housing and husbandry conditions impact lab mice phenotypes and affect study replicability, highlighting the need to account for environmental factors in research design.

 

1.1.  Principles of rigorous and responsible animal research
Prof. Hanno Würbel, University of Bern, Switzerland

1.2.  The importance of environmental factors in shaping the phenotype of laboratory mice: implications for replicability of research findings
Dr. Ivana Jaric, University of Zurich, Switzerland

 

Session 2: Re-wilding Laboratory Mice: Enhancing Behavioral Insights and Translational Models
This session discusses how exposing lab mice to outdoor environments reveals hidden behaviors and physiological traits, offering better insights into social development and aging. Using "wildlings," combining lab mouse genetics with wild microbiota, enhances study reproducibility and relevance, improving the accuracy of research models for human health.

 

2.1. Re-Wilding Mice Reveals Otherwise Hidden Behavioral and Physiological Effects in Lab Mice
Dr. Matthew Zipple, Cornell University, USA

2.2. Born to be Wild – Wildlings, a novel translational research model for human diseases
Prof. Stephan Rosshart, University Hospital Erlangen, Germany

 

Session 3: Incorporating Natural Behaviors: Enhancing Experimental Design and Validity

This session presents ways to integrate natural behaviors into lab research to boost external validity. It covers how creating seminatural environments can reduce stress, improve animal welfare, and produce more reliable data. Adjusting experimental designs to reflect natural behaviors makes results more applicable to human health.

 

3.1. Rethinking Experimental Animal Behavior
Prof. Abhilasha Joshi, National Centre for Biological Sciences, India

3.2. Seminatural environments may enhance both animal welfare and external validity of the observations.
Prof. Anders Ågmo, University of Tromsø, Norway