On The Use Of Animals In Research
Like many, I am an animal lover. I therefore have a personal and professional interest in the “3Rs of animal research”
– the policy of replacement, reduction and refinement. The work I do – developing and applying computational models –
is one of the approaches which can help to achieve this long-term ambition.
However, I would like to make clear that it would not be possible to develop these models without data from animal
experiments, and moreover that the models are not yet in a sophisticated enough state to allow all new research questions
to be answered without the requirement to collect more data. We must make difficult decisions, and I am of the opinion
that advancing medical knowledge and technology to improve human health, quality of life and longevity world-wide is
an important and major challenge. It is under this motivation, and with a heavy heart, that I cannot commit to never using animals in research.
However, following my personal, professional and moral motivations for minimising the negative impact on animals,
throughout my research career I will make the following commitments:
- Wherever possible, to perform and devise research projects which do not require any new animal experimentation. Through either:
- Purely computational research;
- Research which reuses previously collected animal data to provide new scientific insight, thereby maximising the impact of the data collected;
- Research which uses only human patient data, where it is sufficient.
- To perform new animal experiments only where necessary: where the available animal and human data are insufficient, where the research question is critically
important, and where the potential impacts of the research are substantial.
- Where new animal experiments are performed, to make every effort to ensure that the maximum impact is achieved through collaborating with researchers
with interests outside the heart who may make use of other tissues.
- To attempt to advance the translatability and clinical relevance of the computational models used in the field, through the development of both new
methods to expand their scope and highly rigorous and experimentally validated models of specific species and cells. These models reduce the need for
new animal experiments in the short-term, and in the long-term it is hoped they can contribute to the complete replacement of animal research.
Through effective implementation of these commitments, I also hope to promote the development and application of animal free approaches in the wider field.
Atrial fibrillation is the most common cardiac arrhythmia, leading to reduced cardiac output and increased
incidence of stroke and sudden cardiac death. Working with collaborators from the University of Glasgow and
King’s College London, computational models of atrial electrophysiology from cell-to-organ are developed and
applied to understand how the condition occurs, the details of its behaviour, and provide insight into how
it may be more effectively treated.
