Non-technical summaries

This page contains all the non-technical summaries (NTS) for project licences covering Animal Research which are currently held at the Crick.  

Non-technical summaries are also published by the Home Office. 

Non-technical summaries are an essential element of a Project Licence (PPL), a complex document containing information on the methodology of proposed experiments involving animals. It also contains  justification for the planned work, a description of animal monitoring and the care and humane endpoints which are set for each experiment and disease model to prevent unnecessary suffering.  

Before a project licence is approved it goes through a rigorous review by the institutional ethics committee also known as an AWERB (Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body) before being reviewed by a specialist Home Office Inspector. The licence is only valid if approved by the Home Office, and if granted is for a maximum five year term. For more information on the Crick’s governance process for animal research including the PPL application process, please visit our governance page.  

A non-technical summary is a general overview of the proposed work which contains crucial information on the benefits of proposed work, on harms to the animals that may occur during the experiments and on application of the 3Rs in the proposal. This would cover research carried out which replaces the use of animals with non-animal alternatives, progress that has been made to reduce the number of animals needed and the continued work to refine procedures to reduce harm to the animal and advance best practice.   

Non-technical summaries also include data on animal numbers and severity estimates for that research project. 

Actual numbers on severity and animals used are published each year for the Crick as a whole.