Abstract
November 2019 proved to be another showcase scientific annual meeting, with 434 delegates in attendance at our Birmingham venue. To demonstrate our continued commitment to the Concordat on Openness on Animal Research, 37 local sixth form college students attended presentations on the final day of the annual meeting to signal LASA’s support for the principles of openness and transparency. Delegates also had the opportunity to visit our trade partners that had stands in the exhibition hall. LASA is thankful for their ongoing support and sponsorship at our events. Scientific poster submissions totalled 23 for the annual meeting – the prize of £500 to attend a further scientific meeting with the winning poster was kindly sponsored by Envigo.
The ASRU leadership team provided an update of recent changes within the Home Office and provided an overview on subject areas such as Animals Scientific Procedures e-Licensing, regulation, themed inspections, consistency, responsiveness and compliance. The afternoon session of the opening day included a series of guest presentations covering a variety of subjects, including sentience, changing attitudes towards animal welfare in the laboratory animal science sector from the 1940s to the current day and an overview of the work of the Animal Welfare Research Network. The scientific sessions covered a wide range of contemporary issues. Topics discussed ranged from the 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction and Refinement), exploring new ways of assessing the welfare of research animals from LAVA to Snippets of Science: Let’s Learn More About Science, which consisted of a series of diverse presentations delivered by experienced specialist researchers covering current issues in biomedical research.
The LASA Animal Science (Transgenics) Section organised a full-day technical forum focusing on the CRISPR approach to making transgenics. Starting with a history of the generation of genetically altered models, the day was organised into three sessions, each opening with an expert speaker, before a series of short presentations from practitioners on hot topics and refinements in the field. The three sessions covered advances in CRISPR design, CRISPR delivery methods and the quirks of genotyping, allele verification and founder characterisation before closing with a presentation on the ethics and challenges of breeding CRISPR founders. The workshop by LASA’s Education, Training and Ethics Section addressed how we might change people’s behaviour in the often-debated area of experimental design, as well as more generally, drawing on examples from individuals involved in biomedical sciences, statistics and health psychology.
The session by LASA’s Care and Welfare Section and the RSPCA, Does Care and Welfare Matter?, covered potential conflicts between researchers wanting to ‘do things the way they’ve always been done’ and the more ‘enlightened’ who want to introduce welfare refinements, and how to resolve these challenges. There were various presentations on innovative approaches with significant impact on animal welfare, such as experimental refinement, followed by a round-table discussion on challenges for the discovery and implementation of such refinements. In a nod to James Herriot fans, a session entitled All Creatures Large and not so Large, included topics such as equine herd management, challenges associated with translational research studying farm animal models and 3Rs considerations involving amphibians.
Finally, in this jam-packed scientific programme, the Institute of Animal Technology delivered a workshop focussing on the preparation, delivery and assessment of training in the workplace.
LASA were very grateful to have had two fantastic keynote speakers at their annual conference last year. Details of both keynote speakers can be found below.
Inaugural keynote speaker
Different types of mouse model, including transgenic, gene targeted and chemically mutagenised, can give insight into human disease mechanisms. Here, we consider different types of model and review recent results, including in the use of ‘humanised’ mice in which either DNA or entire cellular systems are derived from humans. Motor neuron disease/amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other forms of neurodegeneration are discussed, along with some of the difficulties of translating from mouse to human.
We have worked with laboratory mice for more than 100 years to understand human disease. Here, we briefly touch on why we work with mice in the first place, how closely mice and humans are related and what the differences are that affect our ability to model disease, such as species-specific differences in splicing, gene numbers and even gene content.
Over the years, we have developed many different types of mouse model, and we look at the advantages some models have over others for different types of research, and then at newer technologies such as BAC recombineering for creating mouse models of disease and, in particular, neurodegeneration. Now that we can move quite large pieces of DNA between genomes, we are replacing some mouse genes with human genes to try to create more accurate models of disease, and to express genes at physiological levels.
We also look at the issue of translating from mouse to human, particularly in the field of neurodegeneration. There is a lot of mythology about mouse models in this field, and we aim to dispel some of the myths about mouse preclinical trials.
Finally, we look at what it is to be human, and the effects of our genes, environment, ageing and luck. We are a highly variable species, and variation contributes to disease. Mice can be every bit as variable as humans, and we need to work out how to harness this variation to understand what it is to be human – or mouse. The future of pinning down human variation via mouse studies will lead to new therapies. The mouse remains an enormously powerful system from which to understand human biology and pathology.
Professor Fisher can be heard talking on BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Life Scientific’ about why it took 13 years to introduce human chromosomes into mice, here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b5k4.
A copy of her slides can be downloaded from the LASA website https://www.lasa.co.uk/lasa-annual-meeting-2019/.
Closing keynote speaker
Agricultural land and food security are coming under great pressure from climate change, rapidly increasing human population, urbanisation, demand for biofuels and demand for animal protein. This situation led us to reassess the role of ruminant livestock in delivering key nutrients, especially in the broader context of global-warming potential and land-use change. To date, several studies have examined environmental consequences of different food-consumption patterns at the diet level. However, few have addressed nutritional variations of a single commodity attributable to on-farm strategies, leaving limited insight into how agricultural production can be improved to balance environment and human nutrition better.
Professor Lee discussed his work at Rothamsted Research, and recent results showed that the relative rankings of the livestock products dramatically altered between two metrics: (a) global-warming potential (GWP) per nutrient provision, and (b) arable land use (ALU) per nutrient provision, with monogastric systems preferred under GWP (poultry<pigs<cattle<sheep) and ruminant systems preferred under ALU (sheep<cattle<pigs<poultry). The trade-off between the two metrics suggests that the globally optimal composition of livestock species is likely to be a mixture of monogastric and ruminant animals, and therefore for livestock systems to contribute to global food security, multiple aspects of agricultural sustainability should be carefully and simultaneously considered.
Professor Lee was a very lively and entertaining speaker and an interview with further discussion on this topic can be heard online here. https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/the-role-of-livestock-and-dairy-interview-with-professor-michael-lee/