The Dieter Lütticken Award 2009, a prestigious international annual award dedicated to alternatives in animal testing for veterinary medicines, goes to Dr. A.W. (Dan) Tucker, senior lecturer in veterinary public health at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom).
He will receive the € 20,000 award, which is sponsored by Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health, for the development of an in vitro air interface respiratory tract organ culture model for investigation of bovine respiratory diseases.
Dr. Tucker, in collaboration with Prof. Duncan Maskell at the Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge and Prof. Josh Slater at the Royal Veterinary College, London have established a physiologically relevant, rapid, and sensitive in vitro air interface respiratory tract organ culture model to analyze host-pathogen interactions following single and mixed infections with the respiratory pathogens Mannheimia haemolytica and bovine herpesvirus-1 (BHV-1).*
This model has replaced the use of animals in some studies of respiratory disease and has the potential to be used in developing new vaccines.
It has been developed from early work with the model using organs from dogs and horses and has also been developed as a comparable ex vivo pig model. The work was supported by a grant in 2007 by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs).
Dr. Tucker said, "This model allows us to reproduce the in-life conditions of key parts of the respiratory system and shows real promise for vaccine discovery when combined with emerging high-throughput screening technologies."
"This in vitro organ culture model provides promise as a research and early development tool to replace the use of live animals in the search for new candidate vaccines and anti-infective agents for management of bovine respiratory diseases", added Prof. Coenraad Hendriksen, chair of an independent expert jury panel and Professor of Alternatives to Animal Testing at Utrecht University (the Netherlands).
Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health, a leading global animal health company, sponsors the international Dieter Lütticken Award for alternatives in animal testing for veterinary medicines to support individual scientists and life sciences research institutions that make significant contributions to the 3R-concept, i.e. in reducing, refining and/or replacing the use of animals in testing for development and manufacturing of veterinary medicines.
The Company is a member of the European Partnership for Alternative Approaches to Animal Testing (EPAA), a consortium of the European Commission, universities, NGOs and industry. The partners are committed to pooling knowledge, research and resources to accelerate the development, validation and acceptance of alternative approaches to animal testing.
The amount of the award is € 20,000 and will be presented to Dr. Tucker on September 3, 2010 during the award session at the "Linz Congress 2010", which will be held in cooperation with the 13th Annual Congress of the European Society for Alternatives to Animal Testing (EUSAAT), the 16th International Congress on In Vitro Toxicology (ESTIV) and the 16th Congress on Alternatives to Animal Testing. This joint meeting which will take place in Linz (Austria) from September 2-4, 2010 (www.eusaat.org).
Candidates for the Dieter Lütticken Award are selected by a jury panel composed of experts from public institutions in the animal health and animal testing sector. Applications for the Dieter Lütticken Award 2010 can be submitted until November 15, 2010.
