Dr Hadwen Trust: New scienceroom.org website

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Tuesday, 23, Oct 2007 12:00

New Scienceroom.org website - 'by scientists, for scientists' to raise profile of research without animal experiments.

'The future is science without animal research' – that's the message from the new Scienceroom.org website launched[i] to encourage researchers, policy makers, regulators and science communicators to actively engage with the astonishing progress of non-animal research techniques around the world.

Run by the Dr Hadwen Trust[ii], the UK's leading non-animal medical research charity, ScienceRoom.org provides an on-line portal to all the very latest global news and developments about techniques to replace the use of animals in experiments. Scienceroom.org is written by scientists, for scientists, and actively encourages constructive and informed scientific debate about breakthroughs in, and barriers to, non-animal replacements. Replacement techniques are at the cutting edge of science, using the very latest technology, and Scienceroom.org provides a resource for researchers and science journalists to obtain detailed, reliable updates about advancements.

Says Wendy Higgins, Dr Hadwen Trust:

"Non-animal replacement research is about exciting, cutting-edge, 21st century science and yet far too many within the scientific community remain largely ignorant of its achievements and future potential[iii], whilst others still quite wrongly dismiss it as not 'proper' science. Quite the contrary, the global search for new and more human-relevant avenues to research illnesses is revealing ever more innovative and ground-breaking opportunities that dispense with underperforming or inadequate animal models. It is vital that researchers and science communicators engage with the replacement effort but on their terms and in their language. That's why Scienceroom.org is written exclusively with the science audience in mind."

Scienceroom.org also provides profiles of researchers involved in developing non-animal replacement techniques, interviews with key medical research scientists and science policy makers as well as news of research-funding opportunities from the Dr Hadwen Trust. The charity has also launched a new Science e-bulletin, making it easier for those involved in medical research to keep abreast of the latest replacement trends and achievements.

Raising awareness about the medical benefits of non-animal replacements and the ground-breaking work of British scientists, is a key strand of the Dr Hadwen Trust's strategy. The charity's annual 'OSCAR' science award for replacement research helps to communicate the successes of non-animal research techniques. This year's award was presented to the Neuroimaging Research Group at Birmingham's Aston University, which has pioneered human volunteer research using a non-invasive brain scanner called MEG (magnetoencephalography) which is revolutionising human brain research and helping to replace brain experiments on monkeys and cats.

Notes:

[i] www.scienceroom.org

[ii] The Dr Hadwen Trust is the UK's leading medical research charity funding exclusively non-animal research techniques to replace animal experiments, benefiting people and animals. www.drhadwentrust.org

[iii] For example, Gill Langley, Tom Evans, Stephen T. Holgate and Anthony Jones (2007). Replacing animal experiments: Choices, chances and challenges. BioEssays 29:918-926. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals Inc.