NSW Health & Medical Research | Non-Animal Technologies Network (NAT-Net)

The NSW Government has allocated $4.5 million for a targeted competitive research grant program to help reduce and replace animals in medical research. These funds are being used to establish a statewide Non-Animal Technologies Network (NAT-Net) to increase coordination, address regulatory barriers and build a more cohesive and stronger sector in NSW.

NAT-Net aims to make groundbreaking discoveries in the field of medicine and health while developing and promoting alternative methods that reduce the need to use animals in research.

NAT-Net will bring together national and international communities and capabilities to develop technologies to refine, reduce or replace animal testing, that accelerate discovery science in key areas of clinical need and facilitate the development of new drugs and advanced therapy and medicinal products.

The initial focus of the network will be to develop and produce innovative human cellular models that reproduce human development and diseases and offer capabilities to assist the research community and pharmaceutical industry in testing novel therapies. In the longer term, the network will act as an umbrella to coordinate state and national capacity across a diverse range of new non-animal technologies including computer simulations, synthetic biology and cell-free models.

The Three Pillars of NAT-Net

Infrastructure pillar – This will build statewide assets to support non-animal technology capabilities. This may include improving data standards, biobanking and tissue collection, improve the integration of outputs into a coordinated pipeline for non-animal models, and updated biomedical R&D infrastructure to support non-animal model capabilities.

Research pillar – Four foundational research projects will leverage existing expertise to facilitate and encourage collaboration across the sector, accelerating the development and use of innovative, effective, and sustainable non-animal models in research.

Competitive research grants will be run through NAT-Net.

Regulatory pillar – A non-animal models regulatory working group will be formed in partnership with the Therapeutic Goods Administration, Office of the Gene Technology Regulator and other relevant regulatory agencies. This will address the important need to develop a national regulatory framework for the increased use of human cell models and how they can replace animal use.