EARA News Digest 2025 - Week 5
Welcome to your Monday morning update, from EARA, on the latest news in biomedical science, policy and openness on animal research.
This week: Brain repair electrode; EARA has 200 members!; Mice study on universal flu vaccine; Voluntary movement in monkeys |
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Innovative electrode for brain repair
Researchers in Canada using mice, have developed a device which holds the potential to improve the treatment of debilitating brain conditions.
Some diseases of the brain, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, result in an irreversible loss of neurons, but the current methods of stimulating specific cells (neural precursor cells or NPCs) to generate new neurons lack precision and can also damage brain tissue.
To address this, a team at the University of Toronto – which has recently joined EARA as our 200th member (see next story) – designed an electrode made of materials that naturally dissolve in the body and do not cause damage or inflammation, which can be safely implanted into the brains of mice.
The device then gave electrical stimulation to the brain, and the researchers saw that it successfully delivered this stimulation specifically to NPCs for up to a week, before degrading with no harmful effects.
Lead author Cindi Morshead said: “Our plan is to further develop this technology by creating multimodal, biodegradable electrodes that can deliver drugs and gene therapies to the injured brain.”
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EARA welcomes its 200th member
The European Animal Research Association is pleased to announce that our membership now stands at 200 institutions, spanning 46 countries and six continents.
Commenting on this achievement, EARA executive director, Kirk Leech, said: "Reaching 200 members in just a decade is a testament to the growing recognition of the importance of openness and communication in animal research.
"Starting with only seven members in 2014, EARA’s rapid growth reflects the dedication of our community to advancing public understanding and fostering collaboration across borders.We remain committed to supporting life-saving and life-enhancing research and ensuring transparency in science for the benefit of society." Read more.
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Mice study shows promise for universal flu vaccine
Researchers from Sweden and China have discovered a molecule that could pave the way for a ground-breaking flu vaccine, after it gave mice significant protection against many different influenza virus strains.
The flu, caused by influenza viruses, causes hundreds of thousands of deaths annually, but currently vaccines need to be constantly updated due to the frequent genetic changes of the viruses, making the development of a universal vaccine challenging.
In a study conducted at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, scientists showed that E10 - a small fragment of an antibody isolated from an alpaca at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science in Lanzhou - was able to bind to a protein on the surface of various influenza types after being injected into mice that had been exposed to human influenza viruses.
Davide Angeletti, the lead researcher of the study published in Nature Communications, said: “It's rare to find a molecule capable of protecting against so many different influenza viruses.”
E10 treatment also reduced the viral load in the mice’s lungs and protected critical organs and, even the viruses that mutated, in an attempt to evade the molecule, lost their ability to grow and cause infection.
Before clinical applications, the molecule must be tested in more animal species (see the EARA article on infectious diseases) and undergo clinical trials to ensure it is both safe and effective.
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Greater understanding of voluntary movements in monkeys
An Italian study in monkeys has shed light on how the brain controls natural movements and challenges some existing theories on how the motor system works.
The research, at EARA member the University of Parma and the Sant'Anna School of Pisa, wirelessly recorded the activity of hundreds of neurons in the brain region responsible for voluntary movements in monkeys who were observed expressing themselves with spontaneous actions such as walking, yawning and biting.
Previous studies have only looked at the immobilised brain, making the prediction of how the brain works in natural situations less certain.
And unlike those previous studies, the team saw that specific areas of the brain and single cells do not control specific actions in this brain region, but instead work together.
Luca Bonini, at Parma, said: “According to our results, just as the individual keys of a piano can compose many different melodies, the neurons in the motor areas of our brain create complex synergies, allowing us to organise the variety of spontaneous actions that we are capable of performing, some of which until now were even impossible to study in the laboratory.”
As monkeys share many similarities in their brain and behaviour to humans, these findings may have clinical implications, for example for understanding brain function and use in robotics.
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