The Medical Advances Without Animals Trust (MAWA) which promotes the replacement of animal experimentation in research, has established honours scholarships of $10,000 each to support students undertaking honours research projects that do not use animals or animal products and with the specific intention of encouraging new scientists to advance the development, validation or application of alternative methodologies.
"We want to attract new graduates at the beginning of their research careers to promote the scientific advantages and merit of non-animal methods of research," said Ms. Elizabeth Ahlston, a MAWA Trustee.
The inaugural MAWA Quinn Honours Scholarships have been awarded to Amanda Choo for her project in viral immunology and Mace Neve for her studies in the field of predictive medicine.
Ms Choo’s research will be undertaken at the Centre for Biomolecular and Chemical Sciences at the University of Canberra under the supervision of Professor Suresh Mahalingam. She will be exploring the basic mechanisms underlying acute and chronic arthritis triggered by viral infections. Much research into inflammatory diseases involves the injection of human viruses into rodents causing pain and distress to the animals but these studies have contributed little to the understanding of the human disease. Ms Choo will be using a novel human cell culture model to study viral induced arthritis which should prove more reliable and lead to improved therapies.
Ms Neve’s study will be undertaken at the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University under the supervision of Professor Simon Easteal. She will be looking at DNA differences in the gene that encodes a protein called OXTR and studying the role of oxytocin in reproductive and social behaviour in humans and consequent health affects. A standard approach to studying the function of genes is to create a mouse strain with the human gene inserted. Ms Neve will use human DNA samples from volunteers instead of using genetically engineered rodents and this will avoid the problem of species differences in biological processes and behaviour.
The MAWA Honours Scholarships have been named after Mrs Elsie Quinn, for her outstanding contribution. "Elsie has been a very generous supporter of the MAWA Trust and that is why we’ve named the scholarship after her," said Ms. Ahlston. Mrs Quinn, a 90 year old, long-time resident of North Sydney, said she has always opposed animal experiments. "My husband died 17 years ago and left me comfortably off. I said to myself it’s no use waiting till you’re dead to do things you believe in so that’s why I’ve contributed to MAWA," she said. Asked how she feels about being recognised by MAWA in this way Mrs Quinn said she was, "very honoured."
The MAWA Trust is taking a leading role in animal replacement in medical 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. MAWA also recently awarded its 2008 Doctoral Research Scholarships.
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