The Francis Crick Institute has published its 2022 statistics on animal research, as part of its commitment to openness about animal research.
The latest numbers, which are included in the government's statistics of scientific procedures on living animals in 2022, show that 190,981 procedures were carried out at the Crick last year. Of these, 91% involved mice, followed by zebrafish at 9%.
A list of ten UK institutions that carried out the most procedures on animals in 2022 has been published by Understanding Animal Research (UAR), with the Crick featuring third on the list.
The procedures reported were part of the Crick’s research programmes into many different diseases including various types of cancer, neurological conditions, and infectious diseases. The procedures also included the creation of genetically modified animals, breeding, and the maintenance of established genetically modified mice and fish. Examples on how we use various species at the Crick can be found here.
The Crick establishes and nurtures a ‘Culture of Care’ which is includes its commitment to continuously improve animal welfare, scientific quality, care of its staff and transparency for its stakeholders.
In both 2019 and 2022, the Crick was recognised as one of the UK’s 'Leaders in Openness' by UAR. In 2022, the Crick was awarded UAR’s Openness Award for our approach to discussing animal research in a variety of public engagement activities.
Jan-Bas Prins, director of the Crick’s Biological Research Facility (BRF), said: “Compared to the two previous years, the 2022 numbers are up by 4%. Most of this increase can be attributed to the creation of new genetically modified lines, mice which have specific alternations made to their DNA and then are bred for research. New technologies are increasing our understanding of the role of DNA mutations in disease, and this is reflected in an increase in genetically modified lines required by our biomedical research. New genetically modified lines are only created if it the line is not available anywhere else.”
Dimitrios Anastasiou, Senior Group Leader, and Chair of the Crick’s 3Rs Committee, said: “We want to understand more about how living things work to help improve treatment, diagnosis, and prevention of human disease. The Crick research infrastructure offers easy access to a range of non-animal methodologies. However, animals are still needed to provide insights into how complex organisms work and what goes wrong in disease. If we use animals, we do so with the least number of animals, while ensuring the most optimal conditions to minimise the impact on animal welfare.”
More information and figures from previous years can be found here.
An example of Crick research where work on mice was essential to major new biomedical insights was the discovery of how air pollution can cause lung cancer in people who have never smoked. The Crick team observed how PM2.5, tiny particles around 3% of the width of a human hair, can cause inflammation. The inflammation can then go on to wake up normally inactive cells in the lungs which carry cancer-causing mutations, triggering these cells to grow uncontrollably and form tumours.
Lung cancer cell. Credit: Anne Weston
