Animal Research

Current Projects

Mouse in box

Before the use of any regulated animal species in research, the research proposal and justification needs to be submitted as a project licence, which is reviewed by a local Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body (AWERB). If approved, the proposal is then submitted to the Animals in Science Regulation Unit (part of the Home Office) for further review and for the licence to be granted to permit the research as described in the licence. Project licences are granted for a maximum length of five years.

All project licences contain a Non-Technical Summary to accessibly present to public audiences the research objectives, requirement for the use of animals, justification of species, animal numbers and severity of procedures, how harms are minimised and how the principles of Reduction, Refinement and Replacement (the 3Rs) have been and will be applied. The active project licenses being undertaken at the Institute currently are listed below, listed by year they were granted.

Our animal statistics on animal numbers and severity of procedures are reported on our animal use statistics page

Active project licenses at the Babraham Institute

2024

Title: Interactions between metabolism and epigenetic control in ageing health

Why animals are required for this research:

We are seeking to understand how the availability of metabolites critical for chromatin regulation, and thus for fidelity of cell state and function, changes with age and may contribute to loss of tissue resilience that accompanies ageing. We are also planning to identify interventions that could mitigate these age-related declines. We need to conduct some of this work in whole animals, because ageing cannot adequately be modelled in cell-based systems.

Title: The phosphoinositide network in health and disease

Why animals are required for this research:

Mice are a very well validated model for many mammalian processes that are important in humans including ageing, metabolism and cancer progression. Our planned use of mice will enable us to use directed specific genetic modifications and potential medicines to determine how the phosphoinositide network operates and controls ageing, cancer and metabolism and whether we can modulate the network to improve health. These things cannot be done with humans or human cell lines because of ethical considerations or because of the fact cell lines cannot recapitulate many aspects of cancer progression, metabolic disease and ageing that are seen in whole mammals.

2023

Title: Dynamic homeostasis of stem cells from development to aging

Why animals are required for this research:

The use of mice is necessary to achieve the proposed research goals, which require analysis of intact embryos and adult mice. Unlike other experimental systems, the mouse offers the most relevant in vivo model system, with the ability to genetically alter the genome, to address important biological questions that could impact on major advances in the stem cell field. This project will work with early developmental stages as well as with a small proportion of aged mice.

Title: Breeding and maintenance of genetically altered strains with validation and refinement of techniques used in archiving, rederivation and creating genetically altered mice

Why animals are required for this research:

This project provides core services in support of the research on site by:

Establishment and maintenance of high health status colonies of genetically altered (GA) and wild type mice without genetic drift. Genetic drift is the change in frequency of particular genes in small populations over time due to individuals failing to reproduce. Central management of core colonies reduces excess breeding and allows production of large, age matched cohorts. This allows researchers to design experiments that can test several variables at once with one control group, instead of sequential experiments which each require a control group. This reduces the number of mice used in experiments.
Maintaining a bank of sterile male mice as a service for all users. Females used as recipients for GA or wildtype embryos will not carry pups to term unless they have been mated. By pairing them with sterile males they become pseudo-pregnant, that means that embryos transferred into them will implant, but because their own eggs have not been fertilised they will not compete with the transferred embryos.

2022

Title: Immunity, Resilience and Repair

Why animals are required for this research:

The mouse immune system is extraordinarily similar to the human. While there are differences, these are far outweighed by the similarities; the fundamental appreciation that the cells and genes that regulate immunity in the mouse overlaps substantially with humans has brought fundamental health benefits in a global scale e.g., vaccination, skin grafts, therapeutic monoclonal antibodies, cell therapies. Remarkable discoveries such as regulatory T cells and subsets of innate lymphocytes were first made in mice and then found in humans. B and T cell receptors for antigen are formed by similar molecular processes and their repertoires selected and maintained by similar mechanisms.

The mouse has a long history of contributing to fundamental and applied immunology. The ability to delete individual genes in mice - in specific cells, at specific times - enables studies that are not possible in humans. The ability to perform infections or study the growth of defined tumours and take tissue samples for research is impossible or impractical with humans. Studies of controlled ageing cohorts under defined and constant environments are also impossible for researchers to perform over the human life-course.

Title: The role of redox signalling in health and disease

Why animals are required for this research:

Physiological context is important in our research, because we study biological processes that affect tissues and the immune system, as well as cancer. The complexity of these processes cannot be adequately modelled by other means such as tissue culture, purified proteins or computational methods. Thus, we need to use animals, and in order for our data to be relevant to human biology, we need to use mammals rather than non-mammalian species in which these processes are very different. The mouse is the mammalian species most widely used, most amenable to genetic modification and best understood for such research.

2021

Title: Lymphocyte development and ageing

Why animals are required for this research:

We will use mice because the mouse immune system, in particular lymphocyte development, is extraordinarily similar to the human system. Furthermore, gene regulation and cytoplasmic signalling, our main investigation areas, are also very similar between mouse and human. Additionally individual genes can be effectively deleted in mice in specific tissues without affecting the whole animal. We will use two types of mouse models. First, we will study mice in which specific genes that we have shown are important in ageing, have been deleted only in B cells, ensuring the mice remain healthy overall. These studies will be in mice aged 3 months (equivalent to a human young adult). Second, we will compare 3 month-old wild-type mice with wild-type mice that we will age up to 24 months (equivalent to a human of over 70 years). This will enable us to study defects in B cells that occur as a consequence of ageing.

In addition to the fact that the ability to delete individual genes in mice enables highly specific and detailed studies that are not possible in humans, we are also particularly restricted to using mouse models specifically for these studies, because, unlike human blood samples, it is very difficult to obtain human bone marrow samples for research.

Title: New roles of the Rho GTPase signalling network in health and disease

Why animals are required for this research:

Physiological context is important in our research, because we study biological processes that affect the whole body, namely inflammation, the clearance of infections and metabolic homeostasis. The complexity of these processes cannot be adequately modelled by other means such as tissue culture, purified proteins or computational methods. Thus, we need to use animals, and in order for our data to be relevant to human biology, we need to use mammals rather than non-mammalian species in which these processes are very different. The mouse is the mammalian species most widely used, most amenable to genetic modification and best understood for such research.

2020

Title: The impact of ageing and diet on connective tissue chemistry

Why animals are required for this research:

The ageing of tissues is a complex process involving a multitude of cell types and factors. For example, a blood vessel like the aorta is a complex highly organised structure of cells, collagen, elastin and other connective tissue components. The blood vessel wall is not believed to have a fixed composition at a molecular level, changing with age and in response to factors such as blood pressure. Similarly, the structure of other tissues such as tendons and bone respond to stresses and age related factors which it is not yet possible to reproduce in culture.