Deadline: 02 November 2011
Funding available: £750,000
There is a clear need for experimental models to both predict as well as to investigate drug-induced toxicities in the kidney. In recent years, significant progress has been made in the establishment and qualification of kidney toxicity biomarkers in rodents and in their transferability to man. However, there are no well established in vitro assays available to investigate kidney toxicity.
Assessing the safety of drug candidates accounts for approximately 10-20% of the animals used in the drug discovery and development process....
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Deadline: 02 November 2011
Funding available: £500,000
Recordings of brain activity, in conjunction with behavioural outcome, while mice run on a T-maze may provide greater validity of the cognitive tasks and disease models employed in drug discovery and consequently, much greater certainty of clinical impact.
In an automated, computer controlled, modular maze that has recently been developed, mice perform multiple trials with reduced variability and at a much greater rate. The scientific and welfare advantages of this apparatus can only be fully realised if the animals are freely...
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Deadline: 02 November 2011
Funding available: £500,000
Measurement of the activity of individual rats or mice in their home cage provides useful information in studies from basic research through to drug discovery and development.
The development of a non-surgical, automated approach to measure activity and temperature in animals would avoid the need for surgery or single housing and enable incorporation of additional measurements into existing study types, thereby reducing the number of separate studies. It could potentially impact on the welfare of thousands of animals. More broadly, this...
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Deadline: 02 November 2011
Funding available: £500,000
Biologics form approximately 30% of the global drugs pipeline. Immune responses caused by these drugs, including desired pharmacology and adverse events, are assessed in preclinical studies, primarily using the cynomolgus monkey.
In vitro assays which accurately predict immune responses, including the likelihood of a cytokine storm, would reduce the number of monkeys used by avoiding drugs which are destined to fail on safety or efficacy grounds being taken into preclinical studies.
The aims of this Challenge are two-fold. Firstly, to develop in...
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Deadline: 02 November 2011
Funding available: £1,000,000
The safety assessment of new chemicals across the industrial chemical, agrochemical, pharmaceutical and consumer product sectors has long relied on high dose treatments in animals with default methods for extrapolating observed results to low level exposures in human populations. These traditional ‘whole-animal’ methods are expensive, can use many animals, and can sometimes be misleading with respect to human safety risk.
This Challenge focuses on safety risk assessment based on data relevant to human use rather than on predicting animal toxicity data....
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Deadline: 02 November 2011
Funding available: £1,000,000
A key issue in developing new treatments for bipolar affective disorder is the lack of valid animal models, despite the generation of a whole series of genetically altered animals. Current animal models have limited impact on the understanding of the disorder and do not predict clinical efficacy of novel treatment options. An alternative approach is the use of patient-derived cell models of brain diseases that are relevant and robust enough to produce the large quantities of cells required for molecular...
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