3Rs Initiatives

© EPFL/Selina Slamanig

© EPFL/Selina Slamanig

As a founding member of the Swiss 3R competence center (3RCC), EPFL is committed to adopting best practices in terms of 3Rs. In addition, EPFL aims to be innovative and active within the Swiss 3Rs community. 

The institute’s 3Rs coordinator is available for all your questions, suggestions and ideas, as well as to assist you in applying for funding from the 3RCC or other 3R-focused organizations.

This program was established in 2020 and aims to optimize the exchange of organs or live animals within EPFL. Scientists who perform an organ collection can “offer” other organs to EPFL researchers. Other researchers are informed via a mailing list or this website and can recover a fresh cadaver for extraction of their organ(s) of interest. Additionally, we also try to reallocate surplus animals when possible. If you have surplus animals (preferably young, wild-type animals) that you will not use, please inform us and we will offer them to scientists who could take them under their own experimental license.

Please contact our 3R coordinator Alexandre Widmer for more details, to offer organs and live animals, or to be added to the mailing list.

Available Animals

Since 2022, EPFL has established a partnership with the Swiss Animal Protection (SAP) in order to rehome rats to private owners. Healthy rats that have not undergone medium or high severity grade experiments can be offered to the SAP who will find suitable host families. Several rats have already been rehomed to the satisfaction of the researchers and host families.

This program includes a cost for each rehomed rat, and we encourage every laboratory to plan the possibility of rehoming from the start of their project, in order to include costs in their grant application. However, CPG can also participate in these costs if necessary.

In future, we hope to extend this program to mice as well.

Please contact Alexandre Widmer for more details or to participate in the program.