Expanding the 3R principles

Abstract

The use of animals in research dates back to ancient Greece when physicians and natural philosophers performed experiments on live animals to understand anatomy and physiology. Throughout history, animal research played a vital role in many scientific and medical advances, and continues to aid our understanding of human diseases and the development of new therapies and cures. > Historically, the 3R have been advocated for social and ethical reasons, with less focus on how they can contribute to advances in research itself An increased demand for animal models, together with a pervasive remonstrance against animal experimentation, caused an expansion of Laboratory Animal Science in the 1950s both to professionalize the field and to improve the humane treatment and care of animals in research. This was primarily guided by the principles of replacement, reduction and refinement (3R) defined by Russell and Burch in 1959. Historically, the 3R have been advocated for social and ethical reasons, with less focus on how they can contribute to advances in research itself. Nonetheless, adoption of the 3R has significantly improved medical research, but more improvements are required: specifically, transparency and reporting of animal experiments. The expansion of the 3R to the 5R, to include “Robustness” and “Reproducibility”, may provide a framework for ameliorating these issues. Although most scientists agree that animal models are a central component of biomedical research, there have been critical comments lately regarding their reliability and contribution to medical progress [1]. One major issue is the fact that 95% of drugs that enter clinical trials do not make it to the market, despite promising results in animal models [2]. The contributions of animal models to science are further impaired by poor standards of statistics and reporting, which impair reliability and reproducibility [2]. More recently, genomic data and …