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Award for innovative lung model to reduce animal testing
The Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI) has been honored with the Thuringian Animal Welfare Award 2025. Scientists Dr. Kerren Volkmar and Dr. Maria Straßburger received the award for developing a novel lung model that significantly reduces animal testing in infection research.
With the Thuringian Animal Welfare Award, the Thuringian Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Labor, and Family honors projects that are particularly committed to the protection of animals. This year, the award in the category ”Development of alternative methods to animal testing” went to the research project “Ex vivo lung section model as a translational system for investigating invasive fungal infections.”
“Ex vivo means that we do not conduct research on living animals, but work with lung tissue that remains viable for several days outside the body,” explains Kerren Volkmar, who works as a postdoc at the Leibniz-HKI. "For our lung model, we only use material from surplus mice from research breeding programs that would no longer be needed anyway. From a single lung, we can produce up to 96 wafer-thin precision sections. The sections are very similar to the lung in terms of their cellular composition and ultrastructure. This allows us to observe how pathogens attack cells and how drugs work. In this way, numerous substances can be tested at high throughput without the need for additional animals. This allows many active compounds to be tested in advance and the selection to be narrowed down to a few promising candidates, which then need to be investigated in animal models before they can be used in humans."
Maria Straßburger, who works as an animal experiment manager at Leibniz-HKI, adds: "Some questions, such as how the immune system reacts to a pathogen, cannot yet be fully replicated in the laboratory. That is why animal testing remains indispensable in certain cases. As a rule, researchers first resort to alternative methods such as cell cultures or organoids to investigate mechanisms of action. Only when such approaches are no longer sufficient to understand complex relationships in the entire organism do animal experiments come into consideration. These are always subject to strict ethical and legal scrutiny. This makes it all the more important to avoid unnecessary animal experiments through innovative models – such as ours – and to limit the use of laboratory animals to the absolute minimum necessary."
The award-winning lung model is particularly suitable for studying infections caused by the mold Aspergillus fumigatus, which can be life-threatening for immunocompromised patients. The jury praised the fact that the number of laboratory animals can be reduced by up to 90 percent while still obtaining realistic results for medical research.
Thuringia's Minister of Social Affairs, Health, Labor, and Family, Katharina Schenk, explained in her laudatio: “With this model, the Leibniz-HKI is setting standards: groundbreaking research and the protection of animals go hand in hand here – this is exactly what we want to highlight with the Animal Welfare Award.”
At the Leibniz-HKI, animal experiments are only carried out if there are no alternatives. The researchers strictly adhere to the international 3R principle of “Replace, Reduce, Refine.” This means replacing experiments where possible, reducing their number where necessary, and improving their implementation where they remain indispensable. Each project is rigorously reviewed and approved by independent commissions.
Prof. Axel Brakhage, Scientific Director of the Leibniz-HKI, emphasizes: "The award-winning project is a good example of how we, at the Leibniz-HKI, are developing new methods to reduce animal testing while still achieving reliable results for medicine. The 3R principle will remain the guiding principle for the Leibniz-HKI in the future. At the same time, we are investing in innovative models that can further reduce animal testing."
Further information
• On the use of animal testing at Leibniz-HKI: https://www.leibniz-hki.de/en/animal-experiments-at-leibniz-hki.html
• Information platform “Understanding Animal Experimentation”: www.tierversuche-verstehen.de
Dr. Maria Straßburger
+49 3641 532-1047
maria.strassburger@leibniz-hki.de
Presentation of the Thuringian Animal Welfare Award on October 2, 2025
Copyright: TMSGAF; Delf Zeh
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