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The projects, which will be taking place at seven leading universities across the UK from 2012, aim to further the understanding and treatment of a wide range of diseases while simultaneously developing methods to replace the number of animals used in research.  

The new projects are the latest additions to a portfolio of ground-breaking medical research funded by the DHT since 1970 that does not harm any animals and has helped in the fight against diseases such as cancer, heart disease and mental health disorders.

The new projects aim to:

Kailah Eglington, Chief Executive of the Dr Hadwen Trust, said: “We are delighted to announce funding for seven exciting new projects which will pioneer medical research, bringing benefits to both humans and animals.  All these projects offer the potential to increase understanding about devastating diseases while also helping to replace the number of animals harmed in scientific research.

“Over the last four decades, DHT-funded research has helped develop reliable alternatives to animal experimentation while contributing to scientific breakthroughs. We urge all scientists to think about how they can help shape a more effective and humane future for medical research by using non-animal methods in their work.”

To find out more click here

You can sponsor these and our other projects by buying a donation certificate here

The occasion marked the highlight of the Gold Challenge and saw representatives of countless charities compete on the Olympic track in exciting race events.

During a gloriously hot day the 20,000 plus crowd was entertained by stars such as Britain's Got Talent Paul Potts, Spellbound, the Boxettes, Oompah Brass, Blake, Angel and Dionne Bromfield.

Celebrity teams also took part in 4 x 100 metre races including rugby stars Austin Healey and Gareth Thomas.

The day was a big thank you to everyone who had raised money for their chosen charities by taking up the Gold Challenge. 

Thanks to all our DHT supporters for your fantastic support and commitment.

Visit our facebook page for more photos from the day. Click here.

The DHT Summer Studentship Scheme will enable students to extend their studies over the summer period by working in a real research environment.

The value of each award is £180 per week, up to a maximum of 8 weeks, with a separate budget of up to £500 available for consumables.

The research undertaken must be directed towards replacing the use of living animals in current procedures within the applicant’s laboratory or in the wider field.

Research that requires or involves the use of living animals in any way, even though the ultimate aim may be to replace their use, will not be supported.

Proposals relevant to any area of medical research or testing which will advance scientific and medical knowledge and replace the use of laboratory animals in medical research will be considered.  Applications that integrate a range of disciplines will also be welcomed.

Kailah Eglington, Chief Executive of the Dr Hadwen Trust, said: “We already support a wide range of research projects at many of the top Universities around the country. 

“Our new Summer Studentship Scheme will help extend that support in a very practical way to the next generation of researchers.”

Students are expected to take up the award during the summer period before their final year of study, either at the end of the second year of a 3-year course or the third year of a 4-year course.

Applicants must submit a statement, written by the Research Supervisor of the research project to be undertaken, including a brief background description, the investigation to be carried out, methods to be used and how this project fits in with other research being conducted in the lab.

Click here for further information 

Dr Hadwen Trust Chief Executive Kailah Eglington was among a panel of experts invited to take part in BBC One’s topical debate show “The Big Questions” on Sunday (March 18).

Hosted by Nicky Campbell, the event was broadcast live from Samworth Enterprise Academy in Leicester.   The big question under discussion was “Is animal testing ever justified?”

Among those taking part on both sides of the debate in front of a live studio audience were human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, Alistair Currie from PETA, Jay Lakhani from the Hindu Academy and Professor John Stein.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01f14q1

Medical research will simply not be put at risk if imports of mice and monkeys are halted. I was saddened by the tone of the claim made in The Times this week by Lord Drayson, the former Science Minister, that ferry operators and airlines were jeopardising research by capitulating to the demands of animal rights activists.”

Link: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article3354663.ece

For more than forty years, the Dr Hadwen Trust, the UK’s leading medical research charity, has awarded grants to over 150 research projects to develop techniques and procedures to replace the use of animals in the most diverse areas of medical research including cancer, Alzheimer’s, asthma, kidney, heart and liver disease and diabetes.

Techniques funded by the DHT such as 2D and 3D cell culture, computer and molecular modelling, neuroimaging, in vitro studies, MEG, “omics” technologies and many others are already furthering our understanding of human health and replacing animal experiments.

It is a known fact that the animal model is flawed because animals systems are different from human systems in that they do not suffer from the same diseases as humans. Animals do not have the same immune response to disease that humans do and even where an identical defective gene occurs in humans and animals, the animal will not always develop the same disease as a human or will not develop any disease at all.

Given the documented and evidenced inconsistent results achieved to date in animal experiments, it is now more important than ever to continue developing alternatives which are more human relevant, create better medicine and stop animal lives from being lost, particularly when their pain and suffering serves no relevant purpose. Even scientists agree that the animal model is outdated and we must put more effort into developing alternatives.

Kailah Eglington, Chief Executive of the DHT, said: “We have been funding positive and pro-active solutions to the issue of animal experimentation for many years and I believe it was extremely short-sighted to not only stereotype such work but to unfairly label those individuals who support innovation and progression”.

The 3-page report highlights how the field of toxicology studies has embraced the use of alternatives to animal testing.

The author, Jeffrey M. Perkel, a leading science writer, says that: “Animal-based testing is expensive and time-consuming, morally and ethically troubling, and most significantly, often a poor predictor of human toxicity.  Driven both by legislative mandate and scientific need, a new suite of in vitro and cell culture-based animal-free methods are gaining a foothold in toxicology labs.”

LINK TO: http://www.sciencemag.org/site/products/lst_20120302.xhtml

The review of 118 papers published by UK establishments between 2008 and 2010 was carried out by the BUAV.

The DHT calls for the scientific community to acknowledge the findings of this report and help develop alternatives to these cruel and painful primate experiments with modern techniques and technologies that are more human relevant. 

Article - http://www.buav.org/article/951/buav-releases-review-of-primate-research-carried-out-in-the-uk

Report - http://www.buav.org/_lib/userfiles/files/Science_Reports/Primate%20Report.pdf

Several notable research grants were awarded in the area of most interest to the DHT, that of Replacement of animal experiments. The DHT congratulates the NC3Rs on helping to progress this field of research.

http://www.nc3rs.org.uk/document.asp?id=1739

Kailah Eglington, Chief Executive of the DHT, met Paul Evans who is the Certificate of Designation Holder under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 for LJMU.

Paul Evans explained that, as part of his responsibilities, he is seeking to emphasise the replacement theme of the 3Rs. He was interested to see how LJMU might work with the DHT to further develop alternatives.

The DHT team also saw Professor Peter Wheeler, the Dean of the Faculty of Science, and Professor Mark Cronin, who heads the QSAR team.  This is a project that is developing ‘in silico’ alternatives to pharmaceutical toxicology testing.  Here is a link to the LJMU site for more information:
http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/PBS/research/101365.htm.

Arlesey resident Christine Bird has been named Volunteer of the Year for the Dr Hadwen Trust (DHT).

The DHT is the UK’s leading medical research charity that has for 42 years funded ground-breaking medical research that does not harm any animals and has helped in the fight against diseases such as cancer, heart disease and mental health disorders.

Christine has been visiting the charity’s head office in Hitchin every week since 2004 to help out with admin duties, such as filing and archiving and helping out with fundraising appeals.

Christine said: “I volunteer for the Dr Hadwen Trust because I share the charity’s passion to find alternatives to experimenting on animals and I wanted to take an active role in helping the team reach its aim.

“I never expected anything back and so to be named Volunteer of the Year was a wonderful surprise.  The DHT are always very good at showing appreciation for their volunteers and so winning the award was really the icing on the cake.”

Kailah Eglington, Chief Executive of the DHT, said:  “Volunteers are the lifeblood of the charity and really do make a tremendous difference.

“We are lucky to have a fantastic network of volunteers around the country who help with fundraising as well as in our head office in Hitchin. We were delighted to present Christine with this year’s award in recognition of her loyalty, commitment and dedication to the charity over many years.”

If you would like to find out more about volunteering for the Dr Hadwen Trust, please visit: www.drhadwentrust.org/smartweb/ways-to-help

Dr Ryder argues that moral principles and ideals such as justice, freedom and equality, for example, are “mere stepping stones to the ultimate good, which is happiness; and happiness is made easier by freedom from all forms of pain and suffering”. Dr Ryder’s term “Painism” is the term he uses to encompass this new-world moral theory in the hopes of creating a “fresh and unified moral outlook” amongst mankind, in other words, extending our care and concern for any species that is “painient”, e.g. able to experience pain and suffering. Given animals do experience pain, that they do scream and writhe like us when in pain, that they can suffer, it gives them moral status, and therefore, we should include them in our moral circle.

He goes on to cite recent research that shows that many animal species show empathy and therefore, further demonstrates that animals have their own morality. For example, elephants mourn their dead. This empathy also extends towards humans; an example being dolphins protecting humans from shark attacks.

Dr Ryder also looks at consciousness, stating that it is scientifically accepted that “it is a function of the awake brain and it is correlated with activity in the brain’s cortex”. He concludes that as mammals and many other animals have brains with similar cortices and chemical neurotransmitters, “it is reasonable to assume that these species are also conscious”.

According to Dr Ryder, to not include animals in our moral circle and actively exclude and exploit animals is to discriminate against them; what he calls Speciesism, the animal equivalent of human racism or sexism.

Dr Ryder, a proponent of the ethical treatment of animals since the 1970s claims that the theory of full inclusion of animals within a moral society is slowly becoming a reality, although still highly debated. It would seem he could be right as can be seen, for example, with the current transposition to UK law of EU Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used in scientific procedures, which has recently come into force across the European Union. In an explanatory statement of the aim of the Directive, it was clearly stated that “The ultimate goal should be to replace the use of animal experiments altogether”.

The theory and implications of Painism, however, are considerable and go far beyond the mere treatment of animals; it delves into the very foundations of human society and our perspective of morality but his arguments are compelling, particularly in his comparisons of Utilitarianism vs. Rights theories.

He asks us to look deeply into the question of the oppression of a whole species and suggests that we should concentrate on the individual, rather than the race, nation, group or species that suffers an important principle of “Painism”. Logically, he explains, if we care about the suffering of humans then we should care about the suffering of non-humans. It is about cultivating compassion, extending the same moral and legal rights to animals and abolishing the exploitation of them by stepping down from our self-righteous pedestal of believing ourselves to be superior to other species.

Would we, for example, experiment on a human without his or her consent? Would we sit idly by and watch them suffer pain or distress without doing anything to remove their suffering, even though it might (and I emphasise the word “might”) offer some mild benefit or convenience to millions of others?

Would we be comfortable watching a human, poisoned with a toxic household product, linger in agony for hours or days before dying? Would we use mentally disabled adults, for example, who are unable to communicate, to factory farm human babies to be used for drug testing? Then why do we accept that it is morally acceptable to do the same with animals?

Dr Ryder’s book is uncomfortable at times but deeply provoking and filled with arguments that are borne from his simple truths that we must go further in creating a universal and unified moral outlook that “recognises the rights, interests or welfare of the animals themselves”.

This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity will take place on April 1, as part of the first official Olympic stadium test event, watched by friends, family and a cheering crowd of 20,000.

The Dr Hadwen Trust (DHT) has teamed up with the Gold Challenge, the UK’s only Olympic & Paralympic sport based charity challenge, to give two lucky supporters the chance to be among the first people in the world to run 100m on the same track that Team GB will compete against other world class athletes in the summer of 2012.

People who sign up to Gold Challenge by February 27, and have selected the DHT as their chosen charity and started fundraising, will be entered into a ballot to win this unique opportunity. 

Runners-up will get the chance to take part in the Gold Challenge Stadium Parade along with Team GB Legends, celebrity ambassadors and over 150 UK charities.

Kailah Eglington, Chief Executive, of the Dr Hadwen Trust, said: “This is an amazing opportunity to share in the excitement and build-up to London 2012 and do something special for the DHT at the same time.”

The 100m prize includes:

For more information and to register visit www.goldchallenge.org/index.php

Schools or businesses that would like to get involved with the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games and raise money for the DHT can contact Danielle Goodwin on 01462 436819 or email d.goodwin@drhadwentrust.org

Neuroscience 2011, organised by the Society for Neuroscience, provides a platform for neuroscientists from around the world to debut cutting-edge research on the brain and nervous system and network with colleagues from around the world.

Dr Amanda Ellison was among those chosen from more than 34,000 neuroscientists at the conference to present her investigation into how different parts of the brain talk to each other with regards to the visual world.

She is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology and a member of the Cognitive Neuroscience Research Unit at Durham University

Her study aimed to separate out the differences and levels of involvement between the frontal eye fields and the parietal cortex with regard to spatial discrimination i.e. when something is near to you or far away from you.

Different parts of the brain are involved when it comes to seeing near space and far space and these two regions of the brain are quite susceptible to damage, for example, when people have strokes.

Dr Amanda Ellison said: “It’s important that we know what they do and when they do it. We don’t really know enough yet in order to be able to design rehabilitative techniques for patients who have damaged these two areas.”

Previous investigations have involved highly invasive methods such as creating lesions to part of a monkey’s brain or listening to what these areas are doing by putting an electrode-box on top of a monkey’s head.

But Dr Ellison’s research, funded by the Dr Hadwen Trust, uses a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) which allows magnetic pulses to be sent into the normal, or neuro-typical, brain. 

TMS is proving to be a valuable neuroscience research tool that is being used in place of painful and brain-damaging experiments on non-human primates.

TMS sends magnetic pulses into the neuro-typical brain which turn on nerve cells inside the brain. Only one centimetre of the cortex of the brain becomes activated in response to TMS so it can’t actually become active with response to the task that patients are asked to do. If that area is involved in the processing of that task people will be a little slower than usual because the brain area needed is busy already. The effects don’t last for more than 500 milliseconds. 

Using TMS, humans can be asked to do lots of different manipulations of the same task in order to see exactly what that area is doing in the processing of that task.

According to Dr Ellison: “Animals aren’t a great model. These questions are now much better answered by using non-invasive procedures on humans as they give you a much better handle on what is actually happening in the normal human brain. 

“The brain is brilliant at compensating for problems and will retrain, or rewire itself, if there is damage to how those areas act and interact with each other.”

Some patients can discriminate things that are near to them but not far away from them and vice versa.  Dr Ellison’s research aims to understand what these two areas are doing with respect to the patient themselves or with respect to something else that patients can see, for example, ‘is my cup of tea to the left or right of my plate of biscuits?’  These are two different ways of looking at space, egocentric and allocentric, and our brains naturally look at them differently too.

With TMS it was found that these two different brain areas are involved differently in these kinds of discrimination as well.  When asked to make discriminations in near and far space the study found that the parietal cortex is only involved in near space but not far space.

Dr Ellison predicts that if people with damage to their parietal cortex were asked to take a few steps back they would be able to see where their ‘cup of tea’ is with respect to them, as it would now be in far space.

And, from her study of allocentric tasks, she found that the parietal cortex wasn’t involved in doing this task at all either in near or far space. Therefore, she believes that if patients with parietal damage can be trained to look for things in their visual field, that they aren’t ordinarily able to see, but in relation to other objects they can see, they would be able to do the task.

Kailah Eglington, Chief Executive of the Dr Hadwen Trust, said: “It is encouraging when valuable research such as that carried out by Dr Ellison into the human brain is recognised internationally.

“We have consistently funded more human-relevant research that replaces the use of animals from an ethical, scientific and economic perspective for more than forty years and we are looking forward to many more significant advances in the future.”

Cosmetics Europe is the European trade association representing the interests of the cosmetic industry. Its membership consists of 27 national associations of the EU Member States and beyond, 18 major international companies and 7 associated members.

SEURAT is a 5 year research initiative. It stands for "Safety Evaluation Ultimately Replacing Animal Testing". The European Commission's FP7 Health programme and Colipa launched the Research Initiative "SEURAT-1": "Towards the replacement of in vivo repeated dose systemic toxicity testing" to develop a research strategy which is consistent and ready for implementation. The SEURAT website gives more information about this programme: http://www.seurat-1.eu

Click Here for full press release

The discovery will allow the identification of novel targets and a physiologically relevant screening platform for disease-modifying therapies of PD that do not require the use of animals in such studies.

Click here for BBC article

Click here of Nature Communications Article

Parkin controls dopamine utilization in human midbrain dopaminergic neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells - Nature Communications, 3, 668. doi:10.1038/ncomms1669

Criteria:

To apply, please download the Guidelines for submission and Application cover page:
2012 Grant Guidelines

06.02.12 - On April 1st 2012, as part of the first official Olympic stadium test event, the Dr Hadwen Trust (DHT) and Gold Challenge are giving two lucky people the chance to visit the Olympic stadium and be among the first people in the world to run 100m on the track that will see the stars of Team GB compete against other world class athletes in the summer of 2012.

Just sign up to Gold Challenge for us by February 27th 2012* and you will be put into a ballot to win this once-in-a-lifetime prize.  For runners-up, you will get the chance to walk around the track as part of a charity parade.  Help London 2012 prepare to put on the greatest show on earth and do something special for the DHT.

The 100m stadium package per runner includes:

Starting your Gold Challenge couldn’t be easier, choose between one of three challenges, register with Gold Challenge and choose the DHT as your chosen charity to raise money for.  For more information and to register click here.

If you are a school or a business that would like to get involved with the 2012 Olympic and Paralympics games and raise money for the DHT, please contact Danielle Goodwin on 01462 436819 or email d.goodwin@drhadwentrust.org.

* You must have selected the DHT as the charity you wish to support in order to be in with a chance of winning and have started your fundraising.