NC3Rs Partnership and Impact Award

Funding for UK researchers to accelerate adoption into routine practice of ‘3Rs’ models, tools or technologies concerning the use of animals for scientific purposes, through partnership awards of up to 24 months also involving the developers and new users of such approaches.

The National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) is the UK’s national organisation which leads the discovery and application of new technologies and approaches to replace, reduce and refine the use of animals for scientific purposes.

The NC3Rs Partnership and Impact award scheme aims to build further confidence in using existing 3Rs approaches and accelerate their adoption into routine practice. Through partnerships between developer(s) and new user(s) of a 3Rs approach, these awards support researchers to transfer an approach into new laboratories or organisations and validate that the approach is an appropriate alternative to their established animal model(s).

Applications must be focused on partnership(s) between the developer(s) and new user(s) of a 3Rs approach and facilitate the uptake of this approach by at least one new research laboratory or organisation to achieve an immediate 3Rs impact.

This award scheme supports the last three steps of the NC3Rs project pipeline: validating 3Rs approaches to demonstrate that they are fit-for purpose; dissemination activities to promote awareness within the wider scientific community; and activities to accelerate the adoption of approaches into routine practice. Proposals to this scheme must be focused on uptake and impact and should address at least two of these three steps.

Applications from any area of medical, biological or veterinary research are within remit and those that integrate a range of disciplines or include an industrial partner are particularly encouraged.

Under the 2024 call, additional joint awards are available for grants seeking to achieve a 3Rs impact within cancer or cardiovascular research fields, through collaborations with Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and the British Heart Foundation (BHF), respectively.