Since 2021, the FWF is offering the funding program “Alternative methods for animal experiments” with funds from the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF). The aim of the program is to enable Austrian research projects, that contribute to the 3Rs: reducing, replacing and refining animal experiments to lessening the burden on animals.

One of the top projects that were able to prevail in international assessments due to their excellence is a project by the Ludwig Boltzmann Research Group: Senescence and Healing of Wounds (ShoW). The LBI Trauma acts as host and close cooperation partner of the research group.

In the project headed by Mikolaj Ogrodnik, which is funded directly by the BMBWF, the team is researching the development of vascularized skin equivalents. In the future, these should serve as experimental models for skin wounding and healing.

The SHoW group originates from an Open Innovation Initiative of the Ludwig Boltzmann Society together with LBI Trauma. In addition to top-level biomedical research, the group is also characterized by its close dialogue with practitioners and patients.

“With the funding, the best researchers in the country can develop new alternative methods to animal experiments. This brings us a big step closer to our goal of achieving a breakthrough for replacement methods, ” says Martin Polaschek, Austrian Minister of Science.