The Swiss 3R Competence Centre (Swiss 3RCC) has announced the recipients of its annual awards, recognising outstanding contributions to the Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement (3Rs) of ethical and responsible animal research.

The main 3Rs Award went to the STRIDE-Lab, led by researcher Benjamin Ineichen (pictured centre) at EARA member the University of Zurich (UZH), for their work in the reduction of animal testing through systematic reviews. The group recently published a newsworthy study on the rate of success in the translation of animal studies to human therapies.

Ineichen said: “Our mission is to enhance transparency and reproducibility in research, contributing to more evidence-based animal studies. We believe systematic review is an important approach to limit unnecessary animal experiments and reduce, replace, and refine the overall use of animals in scientific studies.”

The Young 3Rs Investigator Awards went to Viola Bugada and Duygu Yazici, also from UZH, for refining how drugs are given orally to mice, and improved non-animal methods (namely stem cell and organ-on-chips technology) for replacing animals in toxicology testing, respectively.