Individual funding

TO BE ABLE TO TAKE THE MASTER COURSE IN LABORATORY ANIMAL SCIENCE AND WELFARE AT UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA IN SPAIN.

Master in Laboratory Animal Science and Welfare is accredited by the Felasa and forms part of the UAB Laboratory Animal Residential Program recognised by European College for Laboratory Animal Medicine. The program aims to provide expertise and professional excellence in all areas of laboratory animal science relevant to animal experimentation. Specifically, the program is designed for veterinarians and other specialist personnel designated with responsibility for the welfare and care of laboratory animals.

In the Master of Laboratory Animal Science program, the knowledge acquired in Bachelor's program is specialised and deepened in scientific, laboratory animal science aspects. The graduates have a detailed knowledge of animal experiments based on the latest scientific findings in laboratory animal science. This includes all areas of planning, carrying out, evaluating and improving animal experiments in compliance with the latest legal regulations and ethical criteria as well as animal-friendly husbandry, care and care of the animals.

"Too many pre-clinical experiments are giving results which cannot be reproduced. This may be because the experiments are incorrectly designed. In “Completely randomized” (CR) and “Randomised block” (RB) experimental designs, both the assignment of treatments to experimental subjects and the order in which the experiment is done, are randomly determined. These designs have been used successfully in agricultural and industrial research and in clinical trials for nearly a century without excessive levels of irreproducibility. They must also be used in pre-clinical research if the excessive level of irreproducibility is to be eliminated.A survey of 100 papers involving mice and rats was used to determine whether scientists had used the CR or RB designs. The papers were assigned to three categories “Design acceptable”, “Randomised to treatment groups”, so of doubtful validity, or “Room for improvement”. Only 32±4.7% of the papers fell into the first group, although none of them actually named either the CR or RB design.If the current high level of irreproducibility is to be eliminated, it is essential that scientists engaged in pre-clinical research use “Completely randomised” (CR), “Randomised block” (RB), or one of the more specialised named experimental designs described in textbooks on the subject."

The purpose of my Ph.D.-project is to investigate mechanisms involved in chronic pain. I focus on a cell type that under normal conditions support our pain-sensing nerve cells but are proposed to contribute to the painful sensation that follows physical injury or chemotherapy treatment. By investigating the response in this cell type following physical injury or chemotherapy, we will come one step closer to understanding how nerve cells in some cases are affected to signal more intense or chronic pain. Animal Experiments are essential for investigating my questions at hand, and often require a surgical procedure on the sciatic nerve to evoke neuropathic pain in the laboratory animal. When I perform this procedure, it is crucial that I excel, to minimize suffering in the experimental animal. Therefore, I apply for funding to participate in Ph.D. courses to develop my skills in experimental surgery.

The Course covers basic training modules for researchers and personnel who perform procedures (function A), take care of animals (function C), euthanize animals (function D) and design procedures and projects (function B). We will be trained to treat laboratory animals in a right way.