2018 Prize Shortlist

This year 56 projects and scientists from 17 countries made it through to the final judging process.

Every year we build a growing ‘family’ of Lush Prize winners who promote the Prize to colleagues and this has led to a fantastic number of nominations this year from China, South Korea and Brazil in particular. This year also saw our first entrants from Lebanon, Sri Lanka and Turkey,

The shortlisted nominees were:

 

Lobbying

L1: Dr Jeoung Ae Han, Member of National Assembly
South Korea
Passage of major chemical law (K-REACH) reform requiring prioritization of 1R replacement alternatives to animal testing

L2: Dr Siavash Ahmadi Noorbakhsh
Iran
Promotion of using replacement methods in biomedical research in Iran

L3: Partei Mensch Umwelt Tierschutz (Tierschutzpartei) [Animal Welfare Party]
Germany
Tierrechte in die Parlamente, Tierversuche verbieten [Animal Rights in Parliament – Banning Animal Testing]

L4: Rescue + Freedom Project
USA
Lobbying for Life

L5: White Coat Waste Project
USA
WCW Federal Lobbying 2017-2018

L6: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Laboratory Investigations Department
USA
Replacing Animal Use in Global Military and Civilian Trauma Training

L7: Brazilian Network for Humane Education (RedEH)
Brazil
End of animal use for demonstration purposes on learning for 2019, being Brazil the first country on Latin America banning animal classes


 

Public Awareness

PA1: National Anti-Vivisection Society
USA
Public Awareness Initiatives

PA2: Doctors Against Animal Experiments
Germany
Promoting Science instead of Animal Experiments

PA3: Animal Justice Project
UK
Campus Without Cruelty

PA4: Dalian Vshine Animal Protection Association
China
Loss of experimental animals – the pain of experimental animals, you can never empathy!

PA5: Beagle Rescue Network
South Korea
Amendment of Laboratory Animal Law in S.Korea

PA6: Stichting Proefdiervrij
Netherlands
Monkey see, monkey do: spreading the word about animal-free research innovations

PA7: Humane Research Australia
Australia
Ending animal experiments

PA8: White Coat Waste Project
USA
WCW Public Awareness Campaign


 

Science

S1: Alcyomics Ltd
UK
IN VITRO “skin patch tests” for the detection of sensitization, allergy and relative potency assessment

S2: cellasys GmbH
Germany
Skin-on-a-Chip

S3: Prof Yeong Wai Yee – Nanyang Technological University
Singapore
Bioprinting of tissue models

S4: Dr Ellen Berg
USA
Phenotypic chemical biology for predicting safety and efficacy

S5: Dr Kyung-Min Lim
South Korea
In vitro irritation tests with Korean 3D tissue models

S6: Dr Bruno Neves
Portugal
Development of non-animal alternative approach for chemical skin sensitization risk assessment

S7: BASF Experimental Toxicology and Ecology
Germany
AOP-based testing strategy for the prediction of skin sensitization: the ‘2 out of 3’ approach

S8: Johns Hopkins CAAT / UL
USA
Read-Across-based Structure Activity Relationships

S9: Dr Jiangwa Xing
China
In vitro micropatterned human pluripotent stem cell test for teratogen screening

S10: Dr Dan Huh, The BIOLines Research Group, University of Pennsylvania
USA
Microengineered bio-mimicry of human physiological systems


 

Training

T1: Laboratory of Education and Research in Pharmacology and Cellular Toxicology, LPCT Team
Brazil
Disseminating Alternative Methods in Brazil and South America: Education and Training for Animal Replacement in Science

T2: SYRCLE (Systematic Review Centre for Laboratory Experimentation – Department for Health Evidence Radboud university medical center)
Netherlands
Training in systematic reviews of preclinical studies

T3: FCS-free database team, 3Rs-Centre Utrecht Life Sciences
Netherlands
FCS-free Database

T4: Guangzhou Chn-Alt Center for Alternative Research & Evaluation
China
Training platform for industries and academic consensus for replacement animal in China

T5: MatTek In Vitro Life Science Laboratories
Slovakia
Hands-on training and Teaching on Alternative Methods in Toxicology

T6: Ms Kumiko Tatsumi
Japan
Training of primary cell culture using residual resected human tissue


 

Young Researcher – Asia

YR-Asia-1: Dr Guan-Yu Chen
Taiwan
Development of a new assessment model for health effects of particulate matter

YR-Asia-2:  Ms Jee-hyun Hwang
South Korea
Investigation of dermal toxicity using alternative methods to animal testing

YR-Asia-3: Ms Hyunah Moon
South Korea
Development of reconstituted human skin models for testing the safety and efficacy of cosmetic and pharmaceutical substances

YR-Asia-4:Ms Qianqian Wang
China
Application of in-vitro techniques to investigate the pharmacological and toxicological effects of arsenicals

YR-Asia-5:Dr Jiangwa Xing
China
Teratogenic mechanism study of tyrosine kinase inhibitors using the micropatterned human pluripotent stem cell test (µP-hPST) assay

YR-Asia-6:Mr Ye Dong Jin
South Korea
Discovery of Ezrin Expression as a Potential Biomarker for Chemically Induced Ocular Irritation Using Human Corneal Epithelium Cell Line and a Reconstructed Human Cornea-like Epithelium Model

YR-Asia-7:Ms Miri Lee
South Korea
Lipid caring

YR-Asia-8:Mr Kota Toshimoto
Japan
Prediction in silico of major clearance pathway of drugs in vivo

 

Young Researcher – Americas

YR-Americas-1: Ms Lorena Neves
Brazil
Using Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as an alternative to animal inputs in the Western blotting protocol

YR-Americas-2: Dr Michelle Sabrina Silva
Brazil
Use of human scalp as a tool for advances in hair science and understanding of disorders and pathologies associated with extrinsic and intrinsic factors – a replacement for experimental models of non-human animals

YR-Americas-3: Dr Natalia Sizochenko
USA
When a foe becomes a friend: Staphylococcal autolysins as next generation antibiotics

YR-Americas-4: Dr Vinicius Alves
USA
Development of an artificial intelligence-based web platform for early toxicity assessment of mixtures present in major classes of industrial chemicals

YR-Americas-5: Mr Sasan Jalili Firoozinezhad
USA
Modeling radiation injury and countermeasure drug responses in a human Intestine Chip co-cultured with complex human gut microbiome

YR-Americas-6: Dr Pilar de la Puente
USA
Patient-derived in vitro breast cancer model for personalized in vitro drug screening

 

Young Researcher – Rest of World

YR-RoW-1: Ms Aline Chary
Luxembourg
Implementation of 1R principle for an in vitro alveolar model

YR-RoW-2: Dr Alessandro Polini
Italy
Neuromuscular junction-on-a-chip models for the study of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) disease

YR- RoW-3: Dr Arutha Kulasinghe
Australia
Ex vivo expansion of patient derived circulating tumour cells

YR- RoW-4: Ms Parul Chandorkar
Austria
Establishment of an invitro 3D human lung model to study fungal infections

YR- RoW-5: Mr Thomas Kralj
Australia
In vitro identification and prediction of drug induced liver toxicity through use of metabolomic analysis

YR- RoW-6: Dr Daniel Urbisch
Germany
Replacement of animal testing: Evaluation of non-animal methods for assessing skin sensitization

YR-RoW-7: Mr Nikolas Gaio
Netherlands
Replacing animal tests with silicon chips

YR-RoW-8: Ms Alexandra Damerau
Germany
Mimicking arthritis in vitro – a multicomponent model

YR-RoW-9: Mr Sebastian Eggert
Australia
Facilitating animal free precision cancer medicine: development and evaluation of an automated manufacturing and screening platform for personalized 3D cancer models

YR-RoW-10: Dr Francesca Grisoni
Italy
“Artificially intelligent” integrated replacement of animal eye irritation tests

YR-RoW-11: Ms Isabel Rütschle
Germany
Investigating effects of substances on co-cultures of human three-dimensional bronchial models and liver models using a Multi-Organ-Chip approach

 

photo

Photo: Our 2018 Award winners.

 

The Lush Prize only funds complete replacement of animal testing. Nominees are asked to declare any recent involvement in animal testing or use of animal products such as Foetal Calf Serum, animal cells etc. Some nominees may still use animals in some way but have expressed their desire to replace their use.

Winning projects are at the discretion of the judges and are required to ensure that funding is used only for the purpose of complete replacement of animals and animal products.