CRANNME - The complete removal of animal use for neuromuscular effectors testing

孕妇和儿童护理、公共卫生运动、更安全的环境以及先进手术和医疗技术的引进等方面的重大进展，使全球许多国家的人口寿命更长。这样做的缺点是，往往在生活后期表现出来的条件正在造成许多情感和经济困难。在这些疾病中，神经系统疾病的阴影很大。条件包括运动神经元疾病，最有名的通过教授斯蒂芬霍金的生活和神经损伤和损害，所遭受的好莱坞演员克里斯托弗里夫。此外，神经肌肉阻滞剂用于各种情况（例如手术期间的肌肉松弛剂），并且一直在开发中。因此，尽管这方面的研究工作非常多，但很大一部分研究是使用动物模型进行的。啮齿动物是一种主要资源，但由于对物种特异性的关注，有一种重新使用灵长类动物的趋势。因此，显然有必要制定干预措施来治疗或预防上述疾病。主要的测试模型是动物，但是这种类型的实验不适合大规模筛选，并且受到各种费用和监管问题的影响，例如，如何筛选多种药物？药物和非药物治疗（如运动）的组合如何？许多研究兴趣的目标是肌肉和神经之间的界面，正是这种“连接”的复杂性使动物基础研究得以持续。通过NC 3R之前的支持，我们的团队寻求“在管道中生长肌肉”，并尝试重建这些肌肉和神经系统之间的联系。我们现在可以“生长”人类肌肉，需要一种方法来获得人类神经细胞。使用干细胞的最新技术（理论上可以用于产生所有细胞类型（例如肌肉，神经，骨骼，肝脏等）的单一类型细胞）在人体内。NC 3Rs也赞助了这一领域的研究，但与肌肉研究无关，该领域的研究涉及从干细胞中创造运动神经元。现在是将这两个领域联合收割机结合起来的最佳时机，以便看看我们是否可以创造神经-肌肉界面，从而减少甚至取代动物在这一领域的使用，并加快发现各种疾病治疗方法的进展。

Major advances in the care of pregnant women and children, public health campaigns, safer environments and the introduction of advanced surgical and medical techniques has led to the population of many global nations living longer. The downside of this is that conditions that tend to manifest later in life are creating many emotional and economic difficulties. Amongst these conditions, the shadow of neurological disease looms large. Conditions include motor neuron disease, most well known through the life of Professor Stephen Hawking and nerve injury and damage, as suffered by the Hollywood actor Christopher Reeve. In addition, neuromuscular blocking agents are used in a variety of situations (e.g. muscle relaxants during surgery) and are always in development. Therefore, although the research effort on this area is very high, a large proportion of this research occurs using animal models. Rodents are a major resource however there is an emerging tendency to return to primate use due to concerns over species specificity. So there is a clear need to develop interventions to treat or prevent such conditions as mentioned above. The major testing models are animals however this type of experimentation is not amenable to wide-scale screening and is subject to various issues of expense and regulation e.g. how can multiple agents be screened? What about combinations of pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies e.g. exercise?Much of the research interest targets the interface between your muscles and your nerves and it is the complexity of this "junction" that has allowed animal-base research to persist. Through previous support by the NC3Rs, our group have sought to "grow muscles in a tube" and to try and recreate that link between these muscles and the nerve system. We can now "grow" human muscles and need a way to get hold of human nerve cells. Using the latest technology in stem cells (a single type of cells that can be used, theoretically, to produce all of the cell types (e.g. muscle, nerve, bone, liver, etc.) in the human body. NC3Rs has also, but independently to the muscle work, sponsored research in this area concerned with creation of motor neurons from stem cells.There really could be no better time to combine these two areas in order to see if we can create nerve-muscle interfaces that can reduce or even replace the use of animals in this area and that can speed progress in the discovery of treatments for various disorders.