Over the last 40 years, every Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine but one has depended on work using animals. From modern vaccines that protect us against polio, TB and meningitis, to the development of Tamoxifen that has led to a 30% fall in death rates from breast cancer, the role of research animals cannot be underestimated. In a recent post Understanding Animal Research pointed out the major milestones which have ensured the UK has some of the best laboratory animal wel

In one of the goriest scenes on television last year, Lord Grantham of Downton Abbey collapsed after violently coughing up blood all over the dining table. It turned out to be a burst peptic ulcer. In Downton Abbey’s 1925 world, the doctor advised Lord Grantham to keep a healthy diet and to abstain from alcohol. But nearly a century later we have a much better understanding of the cause and treatment of peptic ulcers, partly thanks to animal research. The Foundation for Biome

At a meeting on improving mouse models of disease held last week at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Cambridge, scientists and technicians came together to discuss opportunities to improve the reproducibility of research results obtained using mouse models. Nature reported on some of the environmental and biological factors that affect mouse studies. More and more research is emerging to show the effects of the microbiome on the body, so controlling lab animals’ diet is imperati

The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine is shared between William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura, and Youyou Tu, who contributed to fighting parasitic diseases, among which malaria. The research behind this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine has once again relied on animal research – over the past 40 years, every Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine bar onehas done so. Youyou Tu’s group screened over 200 herbs from traditional Chinese medicine on monkey and mouse models

Earlier this month Britain become the first country in the world to permit mitochondrial donation to be used in treatment and help prevent serious genetic diseases. The procedure, which allows IVF babies to be created using donor mitochondrial DNA, has the potential to help some 2,500 mother in the UK alone. Many are not only concerned with the ethics, but on how safe the procedure actually is. Previous research has used mice and rhesus monkeys, but are these animals a good i