Jeffrey Bajramovic: ’Het 3Rs Centre Utrecht wil onderzoekers actief faciliteren’

Jeffrey Bajramovic has been the new head of the 3Rs Centre Utrecht (3RCU) since July 2022. His ambition for the 3RCU is to become an advocate and a centre of action for the 3Rs, by centralizing information and by facilitating researchers to take up new approach methods (NAMs). On 11 May, the 3RCU will organize a seminar to present Jeffrey and the plan of action for the centre.   Where does your motivation to replace animal experiments come from?   Partly from personal experience, partly from conviction. During my PhD I was working in the field of multiple sclerosis research. While I was working on an in vitro model using human material, one of my colleagues was working on an in vivo mouse model. Her studies progressed with great difficulty, and she finally found out that this was because mice have an intrinsically different immune system than humans do. What surprised me most about this finding was the reaction of most of the peer reviewers. While we reasoned that, for our purposes, the mouse was thus not a good model for the human disease we were studying, they reasoned that our finding had little relevance for humans because we could not get similar results in the mouse. This was the first time I realized that animal models are not always helping us forward, and that -because they are considered the gold standardthey are sometimes even hampering us. Of course, animal models have taught us a lot and can still be insightful if applied carefully, but for many research questions an in vitro approach using human material can lead us to learn more and to have a better understanding of the processes at stake.   And what about your conviction?