The Medical Advances Without Animals Trust (MAWA) which promotes the replacement of animal experimentation in research, has announced the recipients of its 2008 Doctoral Research Scholarships.
Dr Rashmi Fotedar, who has a Bachelor of Science, Master of Science and a PhD in Microbiology, is the recipient of a three-year scholarship worth $75,000. She will be working in the Departments of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales and Microbiology at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney. The principal aim of her research project is to produce an animal blood-free medium for the culture-based diagnosis of human gonorrhoea.
Elizabeth Ahlston, a MAWA Trustee, said "Rashmi’s project has the potential to replace the use of animal blood, which is often unstable, as a culture medium in medical research. The World Health Organization is extremely interested in the development of such media that can be standardised throughout the world. It would be a tremendous breakthrough and meets MAWA’s objectives of eliminating the use of animals in medical research."
The MAWA Trust will also be supporting Mr Eric Han, who has a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical/Biomedical) degree with first class honours from the University of Sydney. Eric’s studies are in the field of neurophysiology and biomechanics and will be undertaken at the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute and the University of New South Wales.
"Eric will be studying nerve pain and altered function caused by compressive interruption of the oxygen supply," said Ms Ahlston. "He is developing a mechanical compression device for use in humans to replace experiments on animals as has been the case in the past. Dogs which have been subjected to injuries have often been used in these studies but have proved unsatisfactory research models because they cannot describe the type of pain they are experiencing."
Dr Hala Raghib, who was the recipient of MAWA’s inaugural Doctoral Scholarship, completed her doctoral studies in 2007. She successfully developed a new drug screening methodology for the safety of cardiovascular drugs for use in human disease. For this work she was awarded the 2007 Eureka Science Prize People’s Choice Award. She was also listed as among the most powerful, innovative and entertaining Melburnians of 2007 in The Age Magazine Top 100 issue.
"Dr Raghib was able to demonstrate that a human cell line she had developed was superior to the standard system of testing on animals," said Ms Ahlston, adding that "MAWA is very pleased that this methodology has significant potential to reduce the use of animals in the pharmaceutical industry."
The MAWA Trust is taking a leading role in animal replacement in research and has previously contributed towards the use of non-animal methodologies by supporting research using human tissue and cell cultures, human gene studies, epidemiology and volunteer studies. In addition to in-vitro methods MAWA will be extending its support to include in-silico methods of computational techniques and mathematical modelling.
Interviews and photographs available upon request
For further information please contact:
Elizabeth Ahlston MAWA Trustee 02 9559 1512
Sharyn Watson MAWA Executive Officer 02 6287 1980