Lush Prize announces 2024 winners
Huge study showing liver-on-a-chip better at predicting safe chemicals than animal tests wins £50,000 Lush Prize.
On May 21st Dr Lorna Ewart, from the Boston USA based organ-on-a-chip company Emulate, received the prestigious Lush Science Prize on stage in London.
Animal tests often fail to spot chemicals that go on to be toxic for humans. Indeed 90% of drugs passing animal tests now fail to make it to market. Because of this there is now a booming industry of companies growing human cells on small devices in a way that mimics organs of the body. However, regulators around the world still require many animal tests because they claim that there is insufficient evidence to show that the new devices perform better.
Emulate won the award for publishing a breakthrough study in December 2022 which conclusively proved the superiority of its liver chips (pictured). It was the largest organ-on-a-chip study ever published, using more that 800 chips to each test 27 chemicals. Some of these chemicals had previously passed animal tests and gone on to cause more than 240 deaths due to liver injury.
Importantly, Emulate’s study also modelled the economic impact that the Liver-Chip could have if widely adopted. Its results suggested an industry-wide $3 billion increase in productivity. The study has now been read more than 31,000 times, cited by 43 additional publications, referenced in 174 news stories, and ranked among the top 1% of similarly aged papers from Nature Communications Medicine.
Our judges were blown away by the size and scale of Emulate’s study. They felt it set a new benchmark for academics and businesses everywhere who are trying to persuade people of the superiority of their new non-animal models.
There is timidity and inertia among some chemical safety regulators, and it appears it will require studies of this kind to bring about the change that we want for the better health of humans and animals everywhere.
The Lush Prize awards evening also saw prizes worth a total of £250,000 handed out to other campaigners, scientists and young researchers from around the world who are helping to bring about an animal-test free future. A full list of winners appears on the Lush Prize website.
notes to editors
Press enquiries
Do please contact us if you’ve like to see a full list of winners or to speak to anyone involved:
Lush Prize is a collaboration between the campaigning cosmetics company Lush and the campaigning research group Ethical Consumer.
The £250,000 prize fund is the biggest prize in the non-animal testing sector, and is the only award to focus solely on the complete replacement of animal tests. It has been rewarding excellence in the field since 2012.
More details of this year’s prize can be found on the website at https://lushprize.org.
The Five Prize categories are (http://www.lushprize.org/awards/) –
-Public Awareness: public awareness-raising of on going testing
-Science: for the development of replacement non-animal tests
-Training: training researchers in non-animal tests
-Lobbying: policy interventions to promote the use of replacements
-Young Researcher: to five researchers under 35 years old specialising in animal replacement research
New, non-financial recognition prizes introduced this year:
-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, who have made a major contribution towards the ending or replacement of animal research and testing.
This year also saw the Andrew Tyler lifetime achievement award presented to Liz White, from Animal Alliance of Canada. Liz has been a leader and stalwart of the Canadian animal rights movement for decades and a champion in the area of animal free research and testing, among many others.
About Lush: Lush is a campaigning manufacturer and retailer of fresh handmade cosmetics with shops in 50 countries. The Lush Prize is one element in a broader campaign called ‘Fighting Animal Testing’. www.fightinganimaltesting.com
About Ethical Consumer: Ethical Consumer Research Association is a not-for-profit research co-operative specialising in independent research into social, animal welfare and environmental issues. www.ethicalconsumer.org
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