The government has announced £22 million of investment into new projects and a dedicated national research hub as part of plans to move UK science away from animal testing.
The funding is split between a new £20 million centre for growing miniature human organs from tissue samples, and £2 million to back nine projects that will help accelerate the development and adoption of non-animal approaches for medicines development.
The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST) said this will unlock new tests to help products reach market more quickly and save lives, while also moving the UK away from animal testing.
Announcing the proposals on Wednesday, science minister Chris McDonald said: ‘Today marks another significant step forward in the UK’s move away from animal testing in science and research.
‘This is all about backing our world-leading researchers and innovators to improve lives, giving them the tools they need to deliver more effective treatments for horrendous diseases like cancer, while also preventing the need for animal testing wherever possible.
‘It’s also a boost for our life sciences sector – with British firms using samples donated by real people and harnessing AI to predict how a medicine behaves – fuelling opportunities for new investment and new jobs, and ensuring Britain is better off.’
BIST said that the new Pre-clinical Translational Models Hub and nine new high-tech projects will develop better and faster ways to test medicines on human biology rather than animals.
The Cambridge-based hub will accelerate the development of testing on organoids – tiny, simplified versions of a human gut, tumour or brain – using cells donated by NHS patients to test new treatments.
Because these retain crucial features of a patient’s own biology, the organoids will help researchers learn how a person may respond to a drug, the department said. This will provide additional insights that can complement information currently obtained from animals.
Scientists in universities and drug companies will then be able to use these cutting-edge techniques in their own labs to work out which medicines are worth pursuing – potentially reducing the time taken to get life-saving treatments to market.
BIST said that this means treatments for conditions like cancer and inflammatory bowel disease could be developed faster and more precisely – helping patients across the UK.
The department said that there were 2.54 million animal testing procedures in Great Britain in 2025, down 3.8% on 2024.
The nine projects aimed at identifying new methods of animal-free scientific testing will be funded by £2 million of investment by Innovate UK – the UK’s national innovation agency.
It said that the government’s Replacing Animals in Science Strategy, published in November, marked a reshaping of the UK landscape, laying a stronger foundation for the next generation of preclinical methodology and enabling a shift towards human-relevant technologically advanced approaches.
Grace Ford, innovation lead for medicines at Innovate UK, said: ‘Alternative approaches to medicines development represent a major opportunity for UK innovation and economic growth.’
‘Through this investment, we are helping to build strategic UK capability in an area of increasing global demand, accelerating the translation of cutting-edge science into commercially viable products and services.’
The nine projects Innovate UK is funding include studies developing beating heart cells in a dish, lab-grown human ear models, and AI that predicts how drugs move through the body. Many target safety studies that still rely on dogs and monkeys.
These announcements come after the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in March said it would support new measures to help phase out animal testing in drug development.