Status Quo
The Medical Faculty OWL at the Bielefeld site is in the process of being established after its foundation in 2018. A new animal facility will be built on the university campus in the future, as well as a medical research building that will house the cross-faculty and cross-institutional core facilities (including omics, microscopy and imaging, human research biobank). A small animal imaging facility will be established in the new animal facility. The existing animal housing of the faculties of biology and chemistry will be transferred to a joint animal research facility with medicine in the future. Two animal welfare officers of the University of Bielefeld accompany the construction.
Scientific questions related to animal research include the development and progression of brain diseases, genetic brain and muscle disease, excitation disorders of nerve and muscle cells, the role of spingolipids and membrane proteins in oncological multiple resistance, and the perception of light. Currently ongoing activities in the 3Rs area at the Bielefeld site are, efficient cross-working group use of organs and tissues from experimental animals, establishment of disease models using stem cells, application of induced pluripotent stem cells, application of bioinformatics machine learning based methods, and prospectively small animal imaging.
Objective / Focus
In the future, the Bielefeld site will be increasingly involved in the process of joint state-wide efforts in the 3Rs area and overarching animal material banks.
In addition, it is planned to join the "Initiative Transparente Tierversuche" (Transparent Animal Research Initiative) and to expand the 3R measures by bundling the existing cross-faculty expertise in the areas of data science, bioinformatics, stem cell research, heavy metal toxicology, cancer research and insect research at the Bielefeld site.