Abstract
The Lush Prize celebrated its seventh anniversary in 2018, which saw seventeen prizewinning projects and one commended project, from ten countries. Since 2012, a total of £2,190,000 funding has been given to 113 projects working to end animal testing. Unique in being a prize fund specifically for the ‘One R’ of absolute replacement rather than the Three Rs, the Lush Prize encourages and rewards activity to end animal use in toxicity testing. The various prize categories are specifically designed to connect the various strands of work required to introduce non-animal testing methods and get them accepted by regulatory bodies.
The Lush Prize is managed on a day-to-day basis by a three-person team at Ethical Consumer Research Association (ECRA) and is overseen by a management committee comprising the ECRA team and four people from Lush. The 2018 committee (‘The Lush Prize Team’) were Rob Harrison, Rebecca Ram and Craig Redmond from ECRA, and Kirsty Barnes, Karl Bygrave, Karen Huxley and Hilary Jones from Lush.
The Prize categories
Total prize money in 2018 stood at £330,000. There are four separate categories of award, and each carries a £50,000 prize (Science, Training, Public Awareness and Lobbying), as well as a total of up to £150,000 across three regional Young Researcher Prizes (£10,000 each, for up to 15 researchers) in Asia, the Americas and the Rest of the World. In addition, Lush Prize judges can, in place of these five categories, award a £250,000 Black Box Prize for a key breakthrough in human toxicity pathway research. This latter prize has so far only been awarded in 2015. Finally, the non-financial Andrew Tyler Award is given for outstanding contribution towards ending animal testing.
Science Prize
For individuals, research teams or institutions for work conducted on relevant toxicity pathways. Outstanding research producing an effective non-animal safety test based on an approach other than toxicity pathways, where none existed before, may also be considered.
Training Prize
For individuals, teams or organisations involved in training others in non-animal methods.
Many established scientists may not have been trained in, or be aware of, alternative methods, while future scientists and students need to be provided with education in alternatives in order to be able to pursue further research in this area. Establishing training programmes and increasing capacity, whether as one-off workshops or ongoing programmes, can make a huge difference to this field. This prize recognises the importance of dissemination of methods among commercial scientists, researchers and students. The criteria for training is broad, and includes training existing scientists in new techniques, open-source databases and the education of school children.
Young Researcher Prize
Open to keen young scientists (up to 35 years of age, at the time of application) with a desire to fund the next stage of a career focused on an animal-test free future.
Because toxicology has for so long been centred on animal testing, many scientists with concerns about the use of animals are deterred from becoming toxicologists. Those who do enter the field can find that access to funding for working on non-animal tests can be a barrier. We want to change this, and to encourage young scientists to develop a career in toxicology without harming animals by offering bursaries to allow them to advance in this area. The three regional categories of this Prize cover Asia, the Americas (the whole of the continent) and the Rest of the World.
Lobbying Prize
This prize aims to reward the work of exceptional individuals, groups or organisations pushing for change, focusing on policy interventions promoting the use of alternatives. It is a One R prize, seeking projects working on replacement (rather than reduction and refinement) and avoids funding projects or initiatives linked to animal testing in other ways.
Scientific innovation needs to go hand-in-hand with policy change to ensure that end users of new testing approaches — industry and regulators — are receptive and responsive to the new methods.
Public Awareness Prize
Recognising that despite years of campaigning, animal testing still continues, this prize is aimed at rewarding individuals or organisations raising public awareness of ongoing animal testing.
Partial legislative victories have led to the common misconception that animal testing, especially for cosmetics, no longer takes place. It is vital, therefore, that the public is reminded that this cruel and unscientific practice does continue in many areas of the world. Support is essential for public awareness activities, to ensure that this issue remains high on the political agenda.
Black Box Prize
The Black Box Prize offers, in any one year, £250,000 Lush Prize fund for a key breakthrough in human toxicity pathway research. This is in place of all the other categories (although, when the Black Box Prize was awarded in 2015, we were able to also provide £250,000 funding in the other categories).
The Lobbying, Public Awareness, Science and Training awards are all retrospective, in that they are for outstanding work and achievements in the 18 months preceding nomination. The Young Researcher Prize is different in that it is to fund future research.
For the Black Box Prize, research should have been completed and published within five years prior to the award. It is the only category for which nominations cannot be made. Allocation of a winner is at the discretion of the judges, based on both their knowledge of the current situation and research that the Prize Team carries out.
Andrew Tyler Award
In 2017, we introduced a new award for outstanding contribution toward ending animal testing. The non-financial prize is named after Andrew Tyler, former director of Animal Aid and a founding Lush Prize judge.
Like the Black Box Prize, this award is not necessarily given annually, but whenever the Lush Prize Team and judges feel appropriate.
Winner videos
We again produced one-minute videos about each of the winning projects. The videos were shown before each respective winner went on stage at the Awards Ceremony to accept their prize, and served as way of introducing each project to the audience. These films, along with details of each winner, can be viewed on the Lush Prize website at: https://lushprize.org/2018-prize/2018-prize-winners/
Global reach of the Prize
The Lush Prize is open to nominations from anywhere in the world and, since 2012, it has provided a total of £2.19 million to 113 projects working to end animal testing in 28 countries. In 2018, there were 17 winning and one commended projects from 10 countries. Nominations were received for the first time from Sri Lanka and Turkey.
The Lush Prize Judges are selected both for their own individual expertise and to ensure they represent a varied geographical range. The nine judges in 2018 were based in Brazil, Canada, Denmark, UK and the USA.
Outreach is conducted to ensure knowledge of the Lush Prize is as widespread as possible. Lush Cosmetics staff across the world promote the Prize to their networks and the Lush Prize Team also attends conferences to communicate via information stalls, oral presentations and posters. In 2018, our conference attendance included: EUROTOX 2018 in Brussels, Belgium; the 21st European Congress on Alternatives to Animal Testing (EUSAAT), in Linz, Austria, where we sponsored the session ‘3D Models and Multi-Organ Chips, Human-Organ-Chips’; and the 8th Conference of Alternative Methods in Shanghai, hosted by the Chinese Centre for Alternatives Research and Evaluation (CCARE), where we also gave a presentation.
Winners’ Seminar
We again held an informal roundtable seminar that involved all the winners, as well as the Lush Prize Team and judges. This provided a great opportunity for all the winners — scientists and campaigners — to meet and discuss their work before the following day’s Conference and Awards Ceremony. The Lush Prize is much more than ‘just’ a funding body; our aim is to connect everyone working to end animal testing and help build a sustainable future for the ethical and scientifically valid replacement of animals.
The Lush Prize Conference
The Lush Prize 2018 Conference and Awards Ceremony took place in Berlin, Germany; the first time they have been held outside of the UK. The Conference provides an opportunity for scientists, campaigners and other experts from around the world to exchange ideas and information about the movement to end animal testing. The theme this year was: ‘Is there an end in sight for animal testing? Can Organ-on-a-Chip replace animal use in safety testing with advanced human focused approaches?’ Sessions were held on:
— Innovation and change in Germany;
— Chips, pathways and gaining regulatory approval;
— Public awareness and lobbying; and
— Fetal Calf Serum, antibodies and other test materials: Making replacement methods fully human relevant.
In addition, there were breakout sessions with presentations from Lush Prize 2018 winners. The Lush Prize website has audio of all the sessions, and copies of most of the presentations can be downloaded in PDF format from https://lushprize.org/2018-prize/2018-conference/
Eligibility criteria
The Lush Prize is different to many other funding opportunities in the field of alternatives to animal testing in that it is a One R rather than a Three Rs prize: we only fund projects that work to replace, rather than reduce or refine, animal experiments.
Non-animal research in this sense means no use of non-human animals (including all vertebrates and invertebrates) or primary animal cells, embryos, tissues, organs and sera. Human biology-based approaches are strongly encouraged, although the use of established cell lines of non-human animal origin shall not necessarily be excluded.
Any nominees for the three science-based categories are asked to clarify if they have conducted any animal-based research, or used animal products, in recent years, and this will be taken into account by the judges. For scientists in some parts of the world, it is recognised that meeting such strict criteria is more of a challenge and many applicants may not yet be working in a completely animal-free laboratory. The judges take this into account, although all winners still need to commit to not using Lush Prize funds in a way that contradicts the eligibility criteria.
Transparency
Although funded entirely by Lush Cosmetics, the management of the Prize is conducted by Ethical Consumer Research Association (ECRA). ECRA is an independent, not-for-profit, multi-stakeholder co-operative with open membership, conducting research with the aim of making global business more sustainable through consumer pressure.
The independent panel of judges selects the winners; neither the Lush Prize Team, ECRA nor Lush Cosmetics have any say in this decision. The judges are selected for their expertise in the areas of animal experimentation, alternatives, science, regulatory processes, public awareness and animal protection. Although a Lush Staff Judge and Lush Customer Judge are selected from online applications to join the panel, their input and decisions are completely independent of the company.
We aim to have judges representing various geographical areas, which allows the panel to greater understand the research and campaigns, as well as the quality of the nominations, in those regions. Crucially, it encourages more nominations from countries previously under-represented.
It is inevitable that nominations are occasionally submitted on behalf of organisations/science teams which the judges work for, or students who they supervise. In these cases, the individual judge leaves the room and takes no part in discussions about that nomination. Impartiality is crucial for both the success and transparency of the Lush Prize.
Comments and feedback
We welcome any comments on how we can improve the Lush Prize. Although we already conduct evaluative surveys with prize winners and those attending the conference, we appreciate any additional feedback. If you would like to speak to us, please contact Craig Redmond (contact details below).
The 2018 Lush Prize Winners
This year, we had overall winners in the Science, Training, Public Awareness and Lobbying categories, each receiving the full £50,000, and thirteen Young Researcher winners.
Science
— Dr Dan Huh, The BIOLines Research Group, University of Pennsylvania, USA (£50,000). Awarded for work on microengineered bio-mimicry of human physiological systems. Dr Huh’s laboratory is working towards the goal of pioneering innovative technologies to emulate and study human physiological systems without the need for animals. Central to these research efforts is ‘organ-on-a-chip’ technology that provides an entirely new approach to modelling the essential features of human organs, with living human cells cultured in microfabricated devices. This work has led to a variety of bioengineered organ-chip models, including a blinking eye-on-a-chip, smoking lung-on-a-chip, placenta-on-a-chip and cancer immunotherapy-on-a-chip. His group has also made major contributions to demonstrating the feasibility of using organ-on-a-chip systems to reconstitute complex disease processes in the human body.
Training
— Laboratory of Education and Research in Pharmacology and Cellular Toxicology, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil (£50,000). Awarded for disseminating alternative methods in Brazil and South America — education and training for animal replacement in science. The LPCT has been working to replace the use of animals with the Regional Platform of Alternative Methods of Mercosul, a platform for the support, promotion and training in in vitro OECD techniques, of professionals and researchers in Brazil and South America. As the LPCT has established expertise in in vitro techniques for skin sensitisation in South America, they have been undertaking theory and practice training courses in OECD testing. They participated in the setting up of the ‘UFG Toxicology League’, a learning community seeking to intensify their knowledge of toxicology. All these projects provide an opportunity to show over 100 future professionals that there are various technologies that avoid animal testing and build a basis for humane, cruelty-free approaches with high predictivity for humans. The LPCT is also involved in Masters and Doctorate programmes in Pharmaceutical Sciences, Health Sciences, and Pharmaceutical Innovation.
Young Researcher
We have continued with three categories for the Young Researcher Prize: Asia, the Americas and Rest of the World. Up to five researchers in each region receive £10,000 each.
Young Researcher: Asia
— Dr Guan-Yu Chen, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. For the development of a new assessment model for health effects of particulate matter.
— Kota Toshimoto, NRIKEN, Japan. For the in silico prediction of major clearance pathways of drugs in vivo.
— Dr Jiangwa Xing, Qinghai University, China. For the study of the teratogenic mechanism of tyrosine kinase inhibitors, by using the micropatterned human pluripotent stem cell test (μP-hPST).
Young Researcher: Americas
— Dr Vinicius Alves, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. For the development of an artificial intelligence-based web platform for early toxicity assessment of mixtures present in major classes of industrial chemicals.
— Sasan Jalili Firoozinezhad, Wyss Institute-Harvard University, USA. For modelling radiation injury and countermeasure drug responses in a human intestine chip co-cultured with complex human gut microbiome.
— Lorena Neves, Catholic University of Petrópolis, Brazil. For investigating the use of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as an alternative to the use of animal products in Western blotting protocols.
— Dr Pilar de la Puente, Sanford Research, USA. For a patient-derived in vitro breast cancer model for personalised in vitro drug screening.
— Dr Natalia Sizochenko, Dartmouth College, USA. For the project, ‘When a foe becomes a friend: Staphylococcal autolysins as next generation antibiotics’.
Young Researcher: Rest of the World
— Aline Chary, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), Luxembourg. For the project, ‘Implementation of 1R principle for an in vitro alveolar model’.
— Alexandra Damerau, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. For the project ‘Mimicking arthritis in vitro: a multicomponent model’.
— Nikolas Gaio, Technical University of Delft, the Netherlands. For work on replacing animal tests with silicon chips.
— Dr Alessandro Polini, Università del Salento / CNR Nanotec, Italy. For the use of neuromuscular junction-on-a-chip models to study Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).
— Dr Daniel Urbisch, BASF SE, Germany. For the project, ‘Replacement of animal testing: Evaluation of non-animal methods for assessing skin sensitisation’.
Lobbying
— Brazilian Network for Humane Education (RedEH), Brazil (£50,000). For ending animal use in classroom experiments. In 2016, RedEH, supported by InterNICHE, submitted a request to the Brazilian government’s National Council for the Control of Animal Experimentation (CONCEA) to ban harmful animal use in education and training. This was supported by many professors and international organisations, including the Brazilian Council of Veterinarian Medicine.
In 2018, CONCEA published, in the Federal Official Gazette of Brazil, Normative Resolution No. 38/2018, declaring that, from 17 April 2019: “The use of animals in demonstrative and observational didactic activities that do not aim to develop psychomotor and other skills of the students involved is prohibited”. RedEH and InterNICHE understand that this applies to practical classes for knowledge development within disciplines such as anatomy, pathology, physiology, psychology, pharmacology and similar, at undergraduate level as well as in high school technical education.
— Commendation: Dr Jeoung Ae Han, Member of National Assembly, South Korea. For the passage of the major chemical law (K-REACH) reform, requiring prioritisation of One R replacement alternatives to animal testing.
Public Awareness
— White Coat Waste Project, USA (£50,000). For defunding and defeating taxpayer-funded animal testing. White Coat Waste Project’s successful campaigns include: the de-funding of Dog Labs at the Department of Veterans Affairs; ending of the FDA’s baby monkey nicotine tests and compelling it to establish its first-ever Animal Welfare Council; the passing of a bill in Virginia to end state tax funding for ‘maximum pain’ cat and dog experiments; urging the EPA to cut animal tests involving the use of over 20,000 small mammals.
Andrew Tyler Award
The Andrew Tyler Award for outstanding contribution to ending animal testing was awarded to Professor Horst Spielmann. Horst is head of the European Society for Alternatives to Animal Testing, and for the past 30 years his work has been instrumental in the development and acceptance of scientific alternatives to animal use globally.
More details on all winning projects are available at: https://lushprize.org/2018-prize/2018-prize-winners/