Physicians Committee Pushes NIH to Make Further Progress for Patients and Animals

The agency sought input on three matters: (1) how to better reward and incentivize research for public impact, (2) new ideas to address critical medical research challenges, and (3) how grants for scholarly works should evolve during a changing scientific landscape. These comment periods provided our team with critical opportunities to push the agency to make more progress for patients and animals.

Nonanimal human-based research approaches have rapidly advanced, providing more reliable models of human biology and disease than animal experiments. As a result, they are increasingly embraced through policy and regulatory changes on a global scale. Despite shifting momentum, animal use remains deeply ingrained—in the classroom, in funding strategies, and in research infrastructure.

The following recommendations from the Physicians Committee focus on changing the culture and landscape of science to facilitate widespread acceptance and use of human-based approaches.

Maximizing Clinical Impact

Animal experiments have inherent scientific limitations due to species-specific differences in biology and disease characteristics, making them poor research models with limited translation of research findings to clinical benefit.  Our recommendations ensure that as human-based methods are prioritized and continue to advance, their development and adoption are not hindered by unwarranted comparisons to unreliable animal experiments:

• Prioritize developing human-specific methods for basic research through high-risk, high-reward funding opportunities.
• Establish a standardized validation framework based on human biological relevance rather than historical animal data.
• Reward researchers using nonanimal methods to answer novel scientific questions.

Improving Transparency and Public Trust

A striking lack of transparency in animal experimentation hinders efforts to track progress toward federal goals of advancing human-based research approaches and reducing animal use. In addition, due to the underrepresentation of nonanimal approaches in biomedical literature, this landscape creates a knowledge gap on the limitations of animal experiments and the power of nonanimal approaches. Our recommendations aim to improve transparency and public trust by ensuring more accurate reporting and dissemination of various research approaches:

• Facilitate accurate reporting of the number of animals used by funded facilities and funding toward projects involving animals and nonanimal methods.
• Require animal use components of grant applications to be available to the public.
• Support systematic reviews of the failures of animal experiments to model human biology and translate to clinical advances.
• Prioritize clearly communicating the failures of animal experiments and the advantages of nonanimal approaches to all stakeholders, including the scientific community, educators, policymakers, patients, and the public.

Expanding Access to Nonanimal Methods and Data

Human-based methods are powerful tools to accelerate medical research discovery, but a lack of access to the tools, instrumentation, and biomaterials needed to implement them remains a barrier to wider adoption. The following recommendations support infrastructure development, resource accessibility, and collaborative efforts to ensure that researchers can easily acquire and use nonanimal approaches:

• Expand funding opportunities for human-based research infrastructure, including the Translational Centers for Microphysiological Systems.
• Support artificial intelligence and other computational tools.
• Create a centralized database of human-based models across all research areas and facilitate data sharing.
• Prioritize funding opportunities that promote collaboration across sectors, disciplines, and career levels.
• Incentivize collaboration between industry and academic institutions to democratize human-based methods.

Facilitating Dedicated Training Opportunities on Nonanimal Approaches

As the NIH continues to embrace human-based research and move away from unreliable animal-based methods, training and education in nonanimal methods must be prioritized. Because animal-based methodologies were the default in medical research for decades, undergraduate and graduate curricula are still largely based on these approaches, creating a workforce that lacks the necessary skills to advance the development and use of nonanimal methods. Our recommendations promote the growth and stability of the medical research workforce to facilitate the widespread acceptance and adoption of nonanimal methods:

• Provide funding opportunities for institutional programs, training conferences, and independent-investigator career development programs focused on human-based research.
• Introduce a prize competition with appropriate financial incentives to integrate training in nonanimal methods into life sciences education.

The above recommendations identify ways the NIH can reward and incentivize human-based research and overcome existing barriers in the widespread adoption of these methods. We look forward to seeing how these recommendations are incorporated into policies as the scientific enterprise continues to transition away from animal use.