Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the use of animals in scientific experiments through promoting investment in human-relevant life sciences.

The use of animals in research is carefully regulated and remains important in ensuring new medicines and treatments are safe.   At the same time, the Government believes that animals should only be used when there is no practicable alternative and it actively supports and funds the development and dissemination of techniques that replace, reduce and refine the use of animals in research (the 3Rs).  This is achieved primarily through funding for the National Centre for the 3Rs, which works nationally and internationally to drive the uptake of 3Rs technologies and ensure that advances in the 3Rs are reflected in policy, practice and regulations on animal research.  Across the UK, the NC3Rs has invested £71 million in research through grants to universities, and almost £28 million in contracts through its CRACK IT Challenges innovation scheme to UK and EU-based institutions, mainly focusing on new approaches for the safety assessment of pharmaceuticals and chemicals that reduce the use of animals.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funds a portfolio of research projects involving humans, human materials, animal models, and non-animal technologies. At this time, no artificial model or simulation can replicate the complexity of disease processes in a living organism and as such, whole organism approaches continue to be important; animal models are used when experimentation in human volunteers is not possible for safety or ethical reasons. However, we do recognise the increasing value of in vitro and in silico models, including organs-on-chips and 3-dimensional mini-brains, which can greatly aid the development of new healthcare innovations and also reduce, refine or replace the use of animals in research.

The Medical Research Council (MRC), part of UKRI, has for a number of years prioritised experimental medicine research, in which studies are undertaken in humans to identify disease mechanisms and provide early evidence and validity of new discoveries or treatments. In order to accelerate progress in this area a vision for a new Precision Medicine Accelerator (PMA) was approved by MRC in December 2019. The first step of the PMA, a new Experimental Medicine Panel, has been launched to fund academic-led, interventional clinical studies in humans.