Imperial scientist commended for using fewer animals in research

Researcher commended in NC3Rs prize - News

Friday 27 February 2009
By Lucy Goodchild

A researcher exploring dangerous blood clots in the lungs has been recognised for his contributions to reducing the number of mice used in experiments.

Charalambos Tymvios, a PhD student from Imperial College London’s National Heart & Lung Institute, has been highly commended in this year’s annual awards from the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs), which were announced last month. This is the third time in four years that an NC3Rs prize has been awarded to an Imperial College London scientist.

Mr Tymvios and his team developed a new way of investigating how blood clots form that means they need 85% fewer mice than traditional research in this area.

The researchers hope their model will help identify new drug targets to treat and prevent a condition called pulmonary embolism, which is caused by blood clots. The condition puts strain on the heart and can cause sudden death.

Every year, there are around 65,000 cases of pulmonary embolism in the UK. When blood clots form in the body, they are often carried to the lungs, where they become trapped by tiny blood vessels. When the heart then tries to pump blood to the lungs, pressure builds up in the heart because the vessels are blocked and this can lead to heart failure.

The Imperial team is looking at what happens during the course of pulmonary embolism and they also hope to use their new technique to find out how different drugs affect the way the condition progresses. The researchers need to use mice because they are the best models for the human disease.

Traditionally, scientists studying pulmonary embolism have looked at the severe form of the disease, which is fatal. Their work has involved causing clots to form in the lungs of conscious mice and assessing how many mice die. Researchers need to use 200 mice in each experiment of this type.

The new method developed by the Imperial team allows them to investigate up to five reversible, non-fatal stages of the disease in an individual mouse. This means the researchers only need 30 mice, 85% fewer than usual since multiple experiments are conducted in the same mouse. The researchers take platelets, which are tiny cells that form clots in the blood, and inject them into anaesthetised mice with detectable molecules attached. They can then use detection probes to watch how the clots form in the lungs.

Charalambos Tymvios, the lead author of the study from Imperial College London said: “Animal experiments are essential to the research we do but we can reduce the number of mice we use and minimise their suffering using this model. We are now hoping to develop a technique using platelets from human donors, which could halve the number of mice we need again, to just fifteen per experiment.”

Platelets form clots in the blood

Dr Michael Emerson, the corresponding author of the study from Imperial College London said: “It is rare as a scientist, and especially as a PhD student like Charalambos, to develop something tangible that can immediately make a difference to the way research is done. I’m really excited about this new model and we would now like to use it to look at other diseases that are caused by clotting blood, such as strokes and heart attacks.”

Charalambos Tymvios's winning paper is entitled "Real-time measurement of non-lethal platelet thromboembolic responses in the anaesthetized mouse", Thrombosis and Haemostasis 99 (2), 435-440.