Scientists headed by Dr Udo Klotzbach, Business Unit Manager Microtechnology at Fraunhofer IWS in Dresden have received the Innovation Award of the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations (EARTO). The organisation honoured the scientists for their development of a multi-organ chip system, on which tiny organs connected by a blood circulation system can be reproduced.

Prof. Thomas Hartung, director of the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) at Johns Hopkings University in Baltimore, and his team have developed a computer program that enables them to predict the toxicity of chemicals better than with animal experiments.

The this year's Animal Welfare Research Prize of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture (BMEL) is awarded to Professor Dirk Görlich and Dr Tino Pleiner from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. The scientists have developed a method that can replace the production of secondary antibodies in animals. The two scientists have succeeded in developing a new type of antibody, so-called secondary nanobodies, which can be multiplied without the use of animals.

The JRC's EU Reference Laboratory for alternatives to animal testing (EURL ECVAM) has launched a second call for tender to review alternative methods and models being used for research in the areas of Cardiovascular diseases, Breast Cancer, Immunogenicity testing for advanced therapy medicinal products, Autoimmune diseases and Immune Oncology Models.