An EU initiative to improve the home cage monitoring of rodents used for research has published a report on its first year of progress.
The European Co-operation in Science and Technology’s Action consortium (COST TEATIME) includes more than 120 researchers from across Europe, and was set up to develop better monitoring of the behaviour of lab rodents – such as sensor implants and video – without the stress of removing them from their cages, thereby improving the quality of research.
COST Actions are EU-funded networks that bring together researchers in science and technology to collaborate on a project of their choice for four years. Among the members of TEATIME are EARA Twitter ambassadors Maša Čater and Stefano Gaburro.
At the FELASA 2022 conference, TEATIME members (pictured) demonstrated the value of new technology to improve monitoring of animal welfare and collection of research data, for example on an animal’s response to treatment.
The first year of the consortium concluded with a training school, a course that gave 24 students the opportunity to learn how to reliably assess rodent behaviour and welfare from TEATIME experts.
Looking forward the consortium noted that with the release of two new COST Actions, on the 3Rs in biomedical science and genome editing to treat diseases, there are also opportunities for TEATIME to find common ground more widely within COST.
END