Proliferative Kidney Disease (PKD) is a deadly parasitic fish disease that is classified as reportable and that has to be monitored in Switzerland. For this purpose, 15’500 potentially healthy pre-reproductive brown trout were electrofished and euthanized since 2000 to determine their PKD status by the applicant at the Centre for Fish and Wildlife Health (FIWI) alone.

The human placenta is a vital organ that acts as a barrier between the circulation of the mother and the growing fetus. It represents the interface between specialized placental cells called trophoblasts and fetal endothelial cells of the micro-vessels. Together these two tightly polarized cell layers perform crucial functions such as nutrient transport to the fetus or production of hormones.

Understanding and overcoming cancer therapy resistance is a major overarching goal of our precision oncology program at the University of Bern. One of the greatest hurdles is the lack of reliable model systems to untangle resistance on a patient to patient basis. Animal models have been widely used to test highly focused questions in oncology and tumor resistance. However, to answer specific questions on a patient-specific basis animal models are not ideal, mostly because experiments are time consuming and incompatible with high-throughput screening.

Today, new antifibrotic drugs for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) are tested in mice with the bleomycin-induced lung-injury and lung fibrosis model. Nevertheless, the resulting fibrotic lung of rodents is different from the fibrotic lung of IPF patients. Therefore, many drug candidates successful in the bleomycin model often fail in later clinical trials. The reasons for this are interspecies differences and difference between IPF, which is slow and irreversible in humans compared to the sharp and acute effect of the bleomycin injury to the mouse lung.

Manmade chemicals have become an essential commodity in our daily lives, from personal care to medicine and agriculture. Regulators require companies to conduct safety testing because, despite their benefits, such chemicals may also pose risks to human and environmental health. Environmental risk assessments still heavily rely on tests with fish. To replace such fish tests, we are developing strategies and assay procedures based on permanent fish cell lines of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), a key species for environmental protection.

Organoids are miniature organs generated from stem cells that provide unique in vitro models of organs in health and disease, and hold promises for personalized medicine and tissue engineering. They alleviate the need for animal experiments, as they enable the study of biomedical questions directly in vitro. They have become a cornerstone of 21st century biomedical research, and they still constitute a fast-developing field. In many cases, the tissue responsible for the organ-specific function – the parenchyma – is an epithelium, supported by a specialized matrix called a basement membrane.

Surgery training on live animals is a controversial subject. While prohibited in Switzerland, surgical training on live animals is performed in many other countries. Several scientific publications as well as organisers of workshops open to a large audience of surgeons support this practice. Our goal is to develop a realistic and cost-effective alternative to the use of live animals for cardiovascular training.