Animal Welfare Research Award: Alternative methods instead of animal cruelty

Parliamentary State Secretary Dr. Nick awards 41st Animal Welfare Research Prize – this year's award goes to scientists from Hannover and Göttingen.

Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Ophelia Nick, presented the BMEL's Animal Welfare Research Prize in Berlin today. The prize is endowed with 25,000 euros. With this award, the Federal Ministry has been promoting the development and research of alternative methods to animal experiments for many years.

This year's prize winners are Leon Budde from the Institute of Mechatronic Systems at Leibniz Universität Hannover and Dr. Tim Meyer from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Medical Center Göttingen. They have succeeded in developing a process for the production of artificial human heart muscle tissue (EHM).

The process can be used, among other things, for research into diseases of the cardiovascular system – such as heart failure or heart attacks. In this way, significantly fewer animals could be required for animal experiments in this area of research in the future.

In the picture: The Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Ophelia Nick with the award winners Leon Budde from the Institute of Mechatronic Systems at Leibniz University Hannover and Dr. Tim Meyer from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Medical Center Göttingen.

More info: https://lnkd.in/e4zH9hcG
Cf. on the production of heart muscle tissue also: https://lnkd.in/dybPPcY

Image rights: © BMEL / Kira Hofmann / www.photothek.net