Since 2012
The idea for Lush Prize originated from the Lush founders’ frustration at the entrenched nature of animal testing. They felt it was taking too long for cruelty-free alternatives to be adopted into the mainstream. An idea emerged: a £250,000 pot of money every year which would fund a series of initiatives working to end the use of animals in experiments.
The Lush Prize launched in partnership with Ethical Consumer in 2012, becoming the largest prize fund in the non-animal testing sector.
As a truly global prize, it has supported scientists and activists in countries around the world including; China, Kenya, Iran, Ukraine and India, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, USA, Canada and across Europe awarding almost £3m to 40 prize winners between 2012 – 2024. Lush aims to support the most progressive work in the field, ensuring animal-free research continues with the highest level of impact possible. We do this by providing resources to projects that fall into five categories:
- The Science Prize and Young Researcher Prize are designed to advance research into alternative non-animal tests.
- The Training Prize is designed to resource projects training scientists or regulators in non-animal methods.
- The Public Awareness and Lobbying Prizes are designed to keep up the pressure to make sure regulation is appropriate and updated to reflect advances in 21st-Century Toxicology.
As well as these categories, if there is a major breakthrough in 21st Century Toxicology – the area which holds out most hope for a ‘Eureka’ moment leading to the replacement of animal tests – a Black Box Prize can be awarded. This could be up to the full prize amount, and this was first awarded in 2015.
In 2022, the (non-financial) recognition award for Political Achievement was launched.This year (2024), we also launched another recognition award for Major Science Collaboration.
- Major Science Collaboration: For international collaborations looking to develop non-animal techniques or approaches more widely and in the longer term.
- Political Achievement: For elected political officials at any level and in any country who have made a major contribution towards the ending or replacement of animal research and testing.
Learn more about The Lush Prize winners via its own website. You can also find Lush Prize on Twitter.
2022 marked 10 Years of the Lush Prize. The developments we have seen in the science and innovation over this time has been phenomenal, but there is still a lot of work to be done to achieve an ultimate end to animal testing.
Meet some past winners of The Lush Prize
Lobbying
Major Science Collaboration
Public Awareness
Political Achievement
Science
Training
Young Researcher
Andrew Tyler Award
Lobbying
Public Awareness
Science
Training
Young Researcher
Andrew Tyler
New: Political Achievement
Lobbying
Public Awareness
Science
Training
Young Researcher
Andrew Tyler Award
Lobbying
Public Awareness
Science
Training
Young Researchers
Andrew Tyler Award
2012
We had 13 outstanding winners of the 2012 Lush Prize Awards.
Each prize award page has full details, video interviews with some of the winners and a reminder of those who were also short-listed.
Lobbying Prize – 3 award winners
Public Awareness Prize – 3 award winners
Science Prize – 1 award winner
Training Prize – 2 award winners
Young Researcher Prize – 4 award winners
Watch for a full update on what our winners did next
2013
In its second year, the Prize had a more than 40% increase in nominations from science projects, and we had 12 outstanding winners of the 2013 Lush Prize Awards sharing prize money of £250,000, plus one Special Award.
They include researchers in university departments from Cardiff to Innsbruck and campaigners from the USA and Sweden. See full details of the winners and also those who were short-listed:
Lobbying Prize – 2 award winners
Public Awareness Prize – 2 award winners
Science Prize – 2 award winners
Training Prize – 2 award winners
Young Researcher Prize – 4 award winners
Special Award – 1 recipient
2014
2015
In addition to £200,000 being shared by the winners of the lobbying, training, public awareness, science and young researcher awards, this year the judges decided to present our first ever Black Box awards, totalling £250,000, to winners involved in mapping the first ever ‘human toxicity pathway’.
Congratulations to all our award winners, and to the other short-listed nominees.
BLACK BOX PRIZE
Key breakthroughs in human toxicity pathways research
The Lush Prize judges believe that mapping the ‘human toxicity pathway’ represents a breakthrough moment marking the first step into a future where a superior molecular science replaces the old, imprecise, technology of testing on animals in laboratories. The award recognises the work conducted on the ‘skin sensitisation pathway’ and has been divided between five winners.
£150,000: The OECD’s Adverse Outcome Pathway programme, France
The programme, directed by Bob Diderich, oversees a range of activities including:
- identifying new non-animal test methods that are candidates to become international ‘Test Guidelines’;
- managing an ‘AOP Knowledge Base’ which is a web-based platform to bring together all knowledge on how chemicals can induce adverse effects.
The OECD is a Paris-based organisation which “provides a forum in which governments can work together to share experiences and seek solutions to common problems.”
£25,000: David Basketter, UK
David is a UK-based researcher who has published over 300 papers on skin sensitisation, bridging the gap between industry and academic research.
He has focussed particularly on trying to predict whether chemicals will cause allergy from their molecular structure and has also chaired important European groups focussed on non-animal tests.
£25,000: Frank Gerberick, USA
Dr Gerberick’s primary research focus has been in the field of skin allergy with over 170 publications. He has also co-authored a book ‘Toxicology of Contact Dermatitis’.
His laboratory at Procter & Gamble in the USA has developed one of the first widely-used non-animal test (the DPRA) to predict toxicity at the first stage in the skin sensitisation pathway.
£25,000: Andreas Natsch / Roger Emter, Switzerland
Andreas Natsch and his colleague Roger Emter have led the development of the second non-animal test to reliably predict toxicity within the skin sensitisation pathway.
Their ‘KeratinoSens’ method, developed in the Givaudan laboratories in Switzerland, uses a human cell line in a test tube and looks for a particular type of gene signalling.
£25,000: Terry Schultz, USA
Terry is emeritus professor at the University of Tennessee where he directed the Biological Activity Testing and Modelling Laboratory.
His focus has been the non-animal testing of chemicals for toxicity and building computer databases of results to help predict outcomes.
He played a key role in mapping the whole pathway in the two 2012 OECD research papers ‘The Adverse Outcome Pathway for Skin Sensitisation Initiated by Covalent Binding to Proteins.’
2016
2017
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