The Biomedical Animal Research News (BARN) Digest collates animal research news from UAR’s 150+ member organisations into one, easy to access, feed. These animal research related stories include topics such as: medical studies and advancements; animal welfare and 3Rs news; funding, regulatory, and policy news; and conservation and environmental research that involves animal testing.
Each week, we pick the most interesting, groundbreaking, and important news to feature in a weekly news roundup. This week we are featuring news stories from 27 November - 3 December 2025.
View BARN to see daily news updates from UAR members.
CLINICAL RESEARCH
‘Wondrous’ drug to treat aggressive leukaemia approved for use in adults
UCL | DEVELOPED USING ANIMALS
CAR T-cell therapy has been tested in mice, rats, dogs, and monkeys.
"Adult patients with an aggressive form of leukaemia will be able to receive a breakthrough immunotherapy, which was invented by UCL researchers, on the NHS within weeks following approval for use by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).
The CAR T-cell therapy – known as ‘obe-cel’ and marketed as Aucatzyl – involves taking a patient’s immune cells and reprogramming them in a lab to identify and target their cancer, before returning them to the body as ‘living medicine’.
Obe-cel is a second-generation CAR T cell therapy invented by scientists from the UCL Cancer Institute, led by Dr Martin Pule, and has delivered promising results in treating patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), an aggressive blood cancer. The therapy has reduced immune toxicity and persists for longer in blood cancer patients, overcoming two common limitations of earlier CAR T cell therapies."
www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/nov/wondrous-drug-treat-aggressive-leukaemia-approved-use-adults
ZOONOTIC DISEASE
Bird flu viruses are resistant to fever, making them a major threat to humans
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, UKRI | MICE
"Bird flu viruses are a particular threat to humans because they can replicate at temperatures higher than a typical fever, one of the body’s ways of stopping viruses in their tracks, according to new research led by the universities of Cambridge and Glasgow.
In a study published today in Science, the team identified a gene that plays an important role in setting the temperature sensitivity of a virus. In the deadly pandemics of 1957 and 1968, this gene transferred into human flu viruses, and the resulting virus thrived.
In previous studies using cultured cells, scientists have shown that avian influenza viruses appear more resistant to temperatures typically seen in fever in humans. Today’s study uses in vivo models – mice infected with influenza viruses – to help explain how fever protects us and why it may not be enough to protect us against avian influenza.
An international team led by scientists in Cambridge and Glasgow simulated in mice what happens during a fever in response to influenza infections. To carry out the research, they used a laboratory-adapted influenza virus of human origin, known as PR8, which does not pose a risk to humans.
Although mice do not typically develop fever in response to influenza A viruses, the researchers were able to mimic its effect on the virus by raising the ambient temperature where the mice were housed (elevating the body temperature of the mice).
The researchers showed that raising body temperature to fever levels is effective at stopping human-origin flu viruses from replicating, but it is unlikely to stop avian flu viruses."
www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_1226811_en.html
www.ukri.org/news/resistant-to-fever-bird-flu-viruses-are-a-threat-to-humans/
BASIC/DISCOVERY RESEARCH
Research reveals how cells organise to build the pancreas
KING'S COLLEGE LONDON | MICE
"New research from King’s College London shows how different cell types develop, assemble and interact to build a functioning pancreas. By showing how pancreatic cells organise themselves across development in mouse models, the research provides a blueprint for modelling the pancreas in the lab and could open new avenues for developing therapies for pancreatic diseases such as diabetes."
www.kcl.ac.uk/news/research-reveals-how-cells-organise-to-build-the-pancreas
TRANSLATION OF ANIMAL RESEARCH
Ethology in pharmacology: how can foraging advance the field?
BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR PHARMACOLOGY | ANIMAL MODELS
"Animal models have the potential to provide valuable insight into drug effects and underlying neurobiological mechanisms, facilitating the understanding of how current treatments work and guiding where novel therapeutics should follow next. However, recent failures in translation have led to a loss of confidence in the utility of animals in reliably capturing behavioural deficits relevant to human symptoms. In part, this is because it is difficult to design a behavioural paradigm that can capture a complex psychiatric disorder its entirety. The assumption that a single behavioural test can capture a disorder, alongside vague consideration for how an animal behavioural test maps back to a symptom may make it difficult to draw accurate conclusions about drug effect and disease mechanism.
The conceptualisation of the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) has provided a critical foundation for preclinical testing that addresses some of these concerns."
www.bap.org.uk/articles/ethology-in-pharmacology-how-can-foraging-advance-the-field/
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH
Rising levels of banned toxic chemicals in otters from Wales
CARDIFF UNIVERSITY | OTTERS
"New research has found that the levels of toxic industrial chemicals, which were banned over 40 years ago, are rising in otters in Wales.
The Cardiff University Otter Project, in collaboration with Natural Resources Wales analysed liver samples from Eurasian otters (Lutralutra) collected across Wales between 2010 and 2019. The team found Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in every otter they tested. Of the otters sampled, 16% exceeded a toxic threshold, which is known to impair reproduction.
PCBs were once widely used in electrical equipment, paints, and plastics due to their stability and heat resistance. Although banned in the 1980s, their environmental persistence means they continue to accumulate in wildlife, and can be found in high concentrations in top predators."
www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/2984857-rising-levels-of-banned-toxic-chemicals-in-otters-from-wales
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Last edited: 3 December 2025 15:33
