Refinement, Reduction, and Replacement: Progress and Practice in the 3Rs

The 3Rs framework - refinement, reduction, and replacement - provides the guiding principles for humane and scientifically rigorous animal research. Refinement focuses on techniques that improve animal welfare by reducing pain and stress throughout an animal’s life. Reduction aims to minimize the number of animals used while preserving scientific validity, through improved experimental design, colony management, and related approaches. Replacement seeks to substitute live-animal use with in vitro, in silico, in chemico, or ex vivo methods where feasible.The 3Rs span a wide range of methods and technologies, and new approaches are developed continually. Stakeholders, including researchers, veterinarians, and animal facility managers, often face difficulty identifying validated or emerging techniques applicable to their own settings. This Research Topic aims to consolidate recent 3Rs research into a single collection to support its dissemination and adoption across the scientific community. Technical progress alone has not produced uniform adoption. How the 3Rs are conceptualised, how non-animal methods gain regulatory acceptance, and how institutions resource and embed 3Rs practice all determine whether a validated technique reaches routine use. This Research Topic therefore welcomes conceptual, regulatory and institutional contributions alongside methodological ones, on the view that the gap between what is available and what is practised is itself a subject worth addressing.Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:• Refinement of experimental procedures for laboratory animals, including methods to reduce stress and pain• Refinement of housing and handling practices, including low-stress handling, training, and environmental enrichment• Refinement of housing related to the use of large animals in veterinary/agricultural research• Reduction through improved colony management, including software tools and management strategies• Reduction through improved experimental design and modeling approaches• Reduction through improved experimental techniques, such as digital monitoring, caging technology, and microsampling• Replacement via in vitro or in silico methods, including microphysiological systems, complex in vitro models, and machine learning applications• Replacement via in chemico or ex vivo technologies, including environmental health monitoring and tissue slice models• Other emerging technologies supporting 3Rs implementation• Related topics that support the 3Rs, such as culture of care, compassion fatigue resiliency, and openness in animal research• Conceptual and framework-level contributions, including the relationship between the 3Rs and complementary or competing frameworks, and how newer concepts are best organised• Regulatory science and the 3Rs, including evidentiary requirements, qualification and acceptance pathways for new approach methodologies, and 3Rs implementation in regulated safety and efficacy testing• Institutional 3Rs programs, including governance, resourcing, training, internal funding mechanisms, and assessment of program impact• Worked examples and case studies of 3Rs decision-making during study design, including where the three Rs are in tension with one another Topic editors: Sally Thompson Iritani, Megan Renee LaFollette, Elizabeth Nunamaker Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85346/refinement-reduction-and-replacement-progress-and-practice-in-the-3rs