3Rs Approach (Replace, Reduce and Refine Animal Models) to Improve Preclinical Research

The principles of 3R’s were developed more than 50 years ago to improve welfare of animals used in research. During the last decades it became synonymous with high quality standards of in vivo procedures and has created an interesting research in the field of bioengineering. In fact, new artificial devices, developed to reduce the number of animals needed for research, are proving to bridge a gap that has so far existed between in vivo procedures and classic Petri-dish cell cultures. Biomedical research needs solid experimental models and 3R’s “approach”, by developing new methods and refining the existing ones, gives an important contribution to this improvement. Pain and stress management in laboratory animals (Refinement-Reduction) and next-generation in vitro tools development and use (Reduction-future Replacement) represent the application of these principles in preclinical research.

The goal of this Research Topic is to bring together the most recent and advanced work on the 3R’s methods in order to share information that can help spread a 3R’s approach to preclinical research. It is known that pain and stress can affect homeostasis creating suffering in animals and increasing the risk of bias. Also, many relevant questions cannot be addressed with the only use of laboratory animals or cell cultures on a Petri dish. A collection of papers describing advances in reducing pain and stress in laboratory animals as well as studies on next generation invitro tools can be extremely useful to biomedical researchers.

Authors are encouraged to send manuscripts, both research articles and reviews, on the following themes:
• Laboratory animals’ behavior: normal vs abnormal behaviors
• Laboratory animals’ handlings and standard Animal Facility procedures
• Laboratory animals’ analgesia and pain management
• Laboratory animals’ stress management
• Strategies to reduce the number of animals used for a specific research (including meta-analysis)
• Studies on/with: organ-on-a-chip technologies, bioreactors, milli- and micro-fluidic systems, 3D cell cultures, advanced co-cultures procedures, 3D organoid cultures
• Studies using both in vivo procedures and next generation in vitro tools to address a specific physiopathological question

Topic Editor Dr. Laura Calvillo is a scientific member of Animal Welfare Body of ENVIGO RMS SRL Bresso (Milan Italy). Topic Editor Dr. Patricia V. Turner currently works as Corporate Vice-President, Global Animal Welfare for Charles River Laboratories (Wilmington, MA, USA). Topic Editor Dr. Johnny Roughan declares no competing interests with regards to the Research Topic.

Please know that abstract submission is not required, interested contributors are welcome to submit their manuscript without submitting an abstract beforehand.