National Growth Fund boost for UMC Utrecht
The National Growth Fund is earmarking €125 million for a new Center for Non-Performed Biomedical Translational Research to accelerate the transition to non-animal research over the next decade. This can lead to safer, more effective and better treatments with less animal suffering. UMC Utrecht is also involved in the Delta Plan Valorization and the DUTCH project, two other applications on which the committee of the National Growth Fund has advised positively.
With the contribution of the National Growth Fund, the Center for Non-Perimental Biomedical Translation (CPBT) aims to accelerate the transition to non-animal biomedical innovations. This will yield economic and societal benefits: better drugs and less animal testing.
Poor predictor and expensive development
Increasingly, it appears that the results obtained from animal tests can only be translated to humans to a limited extent, if at all. In nine out of ten biomedical development projects, it only becomes apparent during the study with patients that animal tests do not predict the therapeutic effect in humans. This makes development of new drugs billions more expensive and causes unnecessary animal suffering. Every year 450,000 animal tests are carried out in the Netherlands alone. This number has not decreased over the past decade.
New center for revolutionary change
Together with a large number of national and international parties, CPBT wants to realize a center for the development and dissemination of animal-free innovations and expertise. CPBT wants to focus on transition processes in areas such as ALS and cystic fibrosis. CPBT plans to implement the developed methods, tools and expertise together with researchers and companies. The new center aims to provide education, training, advice and support to strengthen the acceptance and use of animal-free biomedical innovations. The CPBT will be an integrated program that accelerates the transition to animal-free and will strengthen the earning capacity of the Netherlands.
Social and economic impact
Prof. Wouter Dhert of the Life Sciences Strategic Theme of Utrecht University and UMC Utrecht, as one of the initiators of CPBT, says: “We are enormously proud that the Growth Fund is earmarking money for this wonderful initiative and we will be adjusting our plans in the coming period so that we can then really get started. If we show that economic added value can be linked to better translation of biomedical innovation to the patient resulting in fewer laboratory animals, the Netherlands will occupy a unique leading position in the world.”
Prof. Jeroen Pasterkamp, one of the initiators from UMC Utrecht, emphasizes that the development of transition knowledge will not only contribute to a tremendous acceleration of the development of efficient drugs for conditions such as ALS and cystic fibrosis in the lab: “It will also ensure that these drugs become available to patients faster.”