Rethinking 3R strategies: Digging deeper into AnimalTestInfo promotes transparency in in vivo biomedical research

Abstract

In the European Union (EU), animal welfare is seen as a matter of great importance. However, with respect to animal experimentation, European citizens feel quite uninformed. The European Directive 2010/63/EU for the protection of laboratory animals aims for greater transparency and requires that a comprehensible, nontechnical summary (NTS) of each authorised research project involving animals is published by the respective Member State. However, the NTSs remain sleeping beauties if their contents are not easily and systematically accessible. The German web-based NTS database AnimalTestInfo is a unique channel for scientists to communicate their work, and provides the opportunity for large-scale analyses of planned animal studies to inform researchers and the public. For an in-depth meta-analysis, we classified the duly completed NTSs submitted to AnimalTestInfo in 2014 and 2015 according to the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) system. Indexing the NTSs with ICD codes provided a fine-grained overview of the prospective uses of experimental animals. Using this approach, transparency, especially for highly controversial animal research involving, for example, nonhuman primates, is fostered, as it enables pinpointing the envisaged beneficiary down to the level of the addressed disease. Moreover, research areas with many planned projects involving animals can be specified in detail. The development of 3R (replacement, reduction, and refinement) measures in these research areas may be most efficient, as a large number of experimental animals would benefit from it. Indexing NTSs with ICD codes can support governments and funding agencies in advancing target-oriented funding of 3R research. Data drawn from NTSs can provide a basis for the development, validation, and implementation of directed 3R strategies as well as guidance for rethinking the role of animal research models.

SMAFIRA-c: A benchmark text corpus for evaluation of approaches to relevance ranking and knowledge discovery in the biomedical domain

“…Thus far, the inventory comprises only three case studies from two ICD 10 chapters (i.e. II Neoplasms and VI Diseases of the nervous system), but we plan to achieve better coverage of all ICD 10 chapters (and subcategories) which are connected to great proportions of animal experimentation (24). (e.g.…”

CLEF eHealth 2019 Evaluation Lab

“…Specifically, in 2019, participants are challenged with the semantic indexing of NTSs using codes from the German version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). The NTSs are short summaries which are currently publicly available in the AnimalTestInfo database 12 , as part of the approval procedure for animal experiments in Germany [1]. The database currently contains more than 8, 000 NTSs, which have been manually indexed by domain experts, and that was used to generate a training dataset.…”

“…This task builds on the TAR task first introduced in 2017. The task is a ranking and classification task (similar to the 2017 and 2018 version), and includes two subtasks: (1) No Boolean Query and (2) Title and Abstract Screening. For the former users are provided with a set of topics and parts of the systematic review protocol.…”

Policy driven changes in animal research practices: mapping researchers’ attitudes towards animal-free innovations using the Netherlands as an example

“…Around the world, quality of life has been greatly improved by the research, medicines, treatments and safer environments that have been developed as a consequence of animal-based research in these fields. However, the ethical issues associated with using animals and increased concern regarding animal wellbeing, [2] together with concerns regarding the translatability of animal models [3] and practical difficulties of using animals, [4] are gaining importance [5].…”