The four employees of the Animal Welfare Unit support more than 40 working groups of various clinics and institutes of Jena University Hospital in their animal experimental research. For the qualification to work in animal experiments, the unit offers an extensive course program, from 2020 on also as online courses.

Animal Welfare Unit

Teaching and further education

The regularly offered postgraduate course for principal investigators in animal experiments covers comprehensive specialist knowledge and practical skills in dealing with laboratory animals. Easily accessible, regular online training courses have been offered for animal experiment research groups since 2020 and current information is provided in the regular animal welfare newsletter and at the homepage of the Animal Welfare Unit.

In student teaching, the lecture “Introduction to bioethics and laboratory animal science” for students of the B. Sc. Biochemistry / Molecular Biology in the 5th semester is held by the animal welfare officer. In addition to the legal basis for conducting animal experiments, the lecture includes getting to know experimental animal science techniques and animal husbandry as well as a basic understanding of ethical issues relating to the handling of laboratory animals. In addition, the animal welfare officers are involved in other courses, such as the teaching program Research-Oriented Medicine (FOM).

In cooperation with the Friedrich Schiller University, the Hans Knöll Institute, the Fritz Lipmann Institute and the Friedrich Löffler Institute, current research topics such as experimental animal technology are discussed in the regular advanced training series “Lecture Series Animal Welfare” or alternative methods to animal experiments are discussed.

Research

CIRS-LAS: Critical Incident Reporting System in Laboratory Animal Science

BMBF 2017 - 2022

The project of risk and failure management in animal experiment research has been funded by the BMBF in the funding program “Alternatives to Animal Experiments” since April 2017. The aim of the internet-based CIRS-LAS database is to record critical events in animal research and to make them accessible to other researchers. More than 150 people worldwide have already registered as users of the CIRS-LAS database.

Further information: www.cirs-las.de

Selected publications

Bischoff S, Trietschel D, Enkelmann A, Schiffner R, Estrade P, et al. (2018) Learning from Negative Results-Critical Incident Reporting System in Laboratory Animal Science (CIRS-LAS.de). J Anim Res Vet Sci 2: 009
Enkelmann, A. and Bischoff S (2020) How to Get More Transparency in Animal Experiments-Participation in CIRS-LAS. 2020 - 10(5). AJBSR. MS.ID.001546. DOI: 10.34297/AJBSR.2020.10.001546.

Outstanding achievements

The error database for animal experiments of the Animal Welfare Unit at Jena University Hospital was awarded the Thuringian Animal Welfare Prize in 2019, which was also awarded for the first time in the year for developments to reduce animal experiments. The CIRS-LAS project is a pan-European, anonymous reporting system for risk events in laboratory animal science, which helps to avoid errors and minimize the number of experiments.