3R Prize goes to Birgitte Kousholt from the Department of Clinical Medicine
Veterinarian Birgitte Kousholt from the Department of Clinical Medicine receives this year's 3R Prize for improving the quality of animal experiments via the systematic literature studies on which all good research projects are based on – but which animal research has not had a tradition of prioritising so highly.
Birgitte Kousholt from the Department of Clinical Medicine is now receiving some tangible recognition in the form of the 3R Prize for her work to improve the quality of experimental animal studies.
The prize is awarded by the Danish 3R Center which works for replacement, reduction and refinement in relation to animal experiments. The three R-words cover efforts to find alternatives to animal experiments, reduce the number of animals used in experiments and provide the best possible conditions for those animals which continue to be used in experiments.
Birgitte Kousholt, who is a veterinarian and PhD, receives the prize for her work on introducing a systematic scientific-based method for reviewing preclinical research literature. Several preclinical scientific articles are unfortunately of such questionable quality that it makes no sense to base research hypotheses on them (read more about this issue in the article Better animal research requires durable literature analyses).
"However, if we take a systematic approach towards what’s been researched in the past and critically appraise earlier results, we can end up with far more useful results. We can both cut down on the number of laboratory animals and improve the translation into human disease problems,” explains Birgitte Kousholt, who is naturally very pleased to receive the prize.
Supports responsible conduct of research
"I’m particularly pleased because of the recognition of the work that we put into the AU group AUGUST, where we’ve combined initiatives related to 3R with the university's goal of responsible conduct of research and excellence in science. All with the aim of benefiting both animals and humans,” says Birgitte Kousholt.
AUGUST – or Aarhus University Group for Understanding Systematic Reviews and Metaanalyses in Translational Preclinical Science – was founded by Birgitte Kousholt in collaboration with Professor Gregers Wegener, who is also from the Department of Clinical Medicine.
The award was presented today at the Danish 3R Center’s Symposium 2018. The award comes with DKK 10,000.
Contact:
Veterinarian & PhD Birgitte S. Kousholt
Aarhus University, Department of Clinical Medicine
The surgical research laboratories
Mobile: (+45) 2398 7790
Email: birgitte.kousholt@clin.au.dk