Two researchers from Freie Universität Berlin have received the 2022 CAAT Humane Education Award. They received the prize based on their concept for an eLearning platform on alternatives to animal testing. Veterinarian Dr. Vivian Kral and pharmacist Dr. Christian Zoschke are developing ready-to-use courses featuring videos and 3D animations in the form of "3Rs Info Hub PRO," which builds upon the existing open access platform "3Rs Info Hub."

The aim is to bring together presentations, videos, and podcasts on research methods in one, easily accessible place. The CAAT Humane Education Award is granted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) and comes with a prize of US$6,000 that will assist the two researchers in creating a package course on brain organoids.

"The course materials provided in '3Rs Info Hub PRO' will be created in close collaboration with experts in anatomy, pathophysiology, diagnostics, and clinical therapy," says Dr. Kral. These courses will provide teaching staff at universities and 3R centers with an interdisciplinary pool of interactive multimedia teaching materials.

The abbreviation "3R" stands for "replace, reduce, refine." This refers to the three principles of humane biomedical research laid down by British researchers William Russell and Rex Burch in 1959: Animal experiments should be replaced with alternatives whenever possible, the number of animal experiments should be reduced, and the method of the experiment should be refined in a way that the animals suffer as little as possible.