Status Quo
The central facility for the welfare-conscious husbandry and breeding of laboratory animals is the Institute for Laboratory Animal Science (IVTK - Institut für Versuchstierkunde) with the Central Laboratory for Experimental Animals. The entire institute is certified according to DIN ISO9001/2015 and has a special focus on "refinement". Researchers at the Aachen site are supported in their experimental work by various core facilities (transgenic animals, behavioral studies) and surgical rooms for large and small animals.
The IVTK also offers various courses on animal experimental procedures and hands-on training courses within the framework of education, training and continuing education. In addition to basic courses, courses according to FELASA guidelines and a 2-year postgraduate master course are offered. In cooperation with the Institute for Experimental Molecular Imaging, modern imaging techniques such as PET-CT, µCT, MRI or small animal sonography are available to researchers. Five animal welfare officers at the medical faculty take care of the consultation in the preparation of animal experiment applications.
Objective / Focus
There is expertise in all 3R fields at the University Hospital Aachen, which is particularly underlined by the DFG-funded research group FOR2591 "Severity Assessment in Animal based Research". In previous BMBF-funded projects, research was conducted in cooperation with the Helmholtz Institute for Applied Medical Technology on alternative methods to animal experiments such as isolated organ perfusion (mock-loop) of liver, kidney and heart, partial imaging modeling, 3D printed artificial skin as well as in digital teaching for laboratory animal science.
The establishment of a 3R professorship should represent all 3R fields in research and teaching. Due to the proximity to the faculties of mechanical and electrical engineering, a translational professorship with a focus on large animals and surgical interventions on large and small animals would be appropriate. Due to new regulatory requirements, the re-approval of medical devices requires a much higher amount of pre- and clinical data. Thus, the new 3R professorship could provide advice in this area and also make the knowledge available to the other network partners. The University Hospital Aachen can also contribute its expertise in the field of mathematical modeling. By means of MoPS (Mining of Best Parameter Algorithm) it is possible to access a very large amount of data and to identify the most relevant parameters, which would simplify the performance of larger meta-studies. By centrally storing experimental data in a central database, these data can also be assessed for burden of animal experiments by means of score. As vice-chairman, Prof. Tolba provides the link to the permanent DFG Senate Commission on Animal Experimental Research and the GV-SOLAS.