The 3Rs: Alternatives and Innovation in Animal Research

Did you know that moths can be used to study tuberculosis (TB)? In fact, wax moths (Galleria mellonella) may represent human disease better than mammals. When someone is infected with TB the immune system swamps the bacteria to form a ‘granuloma’, trapping the bacteria inside layers of immune cells. These are seen in Galleria moths but do not form in mice, the animal most used to study TB. Testing new drugs using Galleria can replace up to 200 mice per drug and takes days rather than weeks. Hear from Mas about how moths can be used to tackle the multi-drug resistant TB on the rise worldwide.

Chronic pain affects as many as one in five people, but most pain-relieving drugs (analgesics) only reduce pain by up to 30%. The underlying mechanisms which cause chronic pain, for example in neuropathy, osteoarthritis and bone cancer, are complex. Scientists currently rely on experiments which use animals, typically mice and rats, to better understand why chronic pain happens and how we can treat it. Hear how Dr Kirsty Bannister and her team are refining these experiments to cause less pain to rodents, whilst discovering new pathways which could be targeted to treat chronic pain in humans.