CRACK IT launch their annual challenges

The 2016 CRACK IT Challenges to improve business processes have been announced and will be launched on 8^th September 2016.

The research funding competition, consists of four challenges funded by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement & Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs). The challenges require solutions to reduce the use of animals used in research.

Dr Cathy Vickers, Head of Innovation at NC3Rs, told Laboratory News: “The CRACK IT challenge helps to bridge the gap between academic research and industry application so it is fit for purpose. The challenges are developed with businesses — these are real issues that they are having which affect their product (drugs, cosmetics, chemicals, etc.) development.

“An example of a past winner is Actual Analytics, a spin out from Edinburgh University. From one of the challenges they created Actual Home Cage Analyser, a product that allows for non-invasive 24/7 data gathering from group-housed rodents living with their cage mates,” she said.

The challenges this year are:

• Osteo-chip — an in vitro model to recapitulate the human osteoarthritic joint
• Retinal 3D — a physiologically competent human retinal 3D model
• EASE —EliminAting Surgical Embryo transfer in mice and
• Maximise —Maximising confidence whilst minimising data generation.

There are nine sponsors taking part in the challenges including Arthritis Research UK, GSK, Roche, Bayer, and the EPSRC. The competition is open to companies and academics in both the UK and mainland EU.

Those wishing to register to take part in this year’s Challenges should download and complete a registration form to attend the launch event and return it to crackitenquiries@nc3rs.org.uk. The deadline for registration is 1^st September.

More information can be found here — https://www.crackit.org.uk/events/2016-crack-it-challenges-launch-event.