In order to optimize the professional capabilities of Taiwan’s microsurgery field, the National Laboratory Animal Center under the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL) of the Republic of China (Taiwan) has established the world’s first “Interactive Laboratory Animal Microsurgery Education Center”. This initiative aims to improve the quality of experiments and reduce the sacrifice of laboratory animals.
According to a press release from the NARL on the 11th, microsurgery on laboratory animals plays a crucial role in preclinical research. Research teams can simulate human diseases, evaluate drug efficacy, and explore new treatment strategies through microsurgery.
The “Interactive Laboratory Animal Microsurgery Education Center” at the NARL features a hybrid teaching model that integrates on-site, remote, and streaming media, helping students quickly grasp the details and techniques of microsurgery. This approach greatly aids in drug testing, the development of new treatment technologies, and significantly reduces the sacrifice of laboratory animals, in line with the 3R principles of animal experimentation – Replace, Reduce, Refine.
In testing new drugs, microsurgery on small lab animals such as rodents is often used to simulate conditions like stroke or heart attack caused by vascular embolism, enabling the testing of new therapies or vascular drugs. It is also utilized to simulate tumor formation and organ transplant scenarios for testing new tumor drugs or anti-rejection medications.
In addition, emerging treatment techniques like stem cell therapy and the implantation of miniature drug delivery devices often require microsurgery on laboratory animals for preliminary testing. Procedures such as in vitro fertilization, genetic modification, embryo freezing, and skilled embryo transplantation also necessitate microsurgery under a microscope.
To enhance the professional capabilities of microsurgery on laboratory animals in Taiwan, the NARL has recruited Dr. Yijie Chen, Director of the Microsurgery Core Facility at the University of California, Davis, a renowned expert in the field, to establish the world’s first “Interactive Laboratory Animal Microsurgery Education Center”.
Unlike traditional microsurgery teaching methods where students gather around a teacher to observe a microscope screen, the new education center adopts a one-on-one model, allowing students to watch surgeries from anywhere via screens, facilitating a rapid understanding of microsurgery details and techniques.
With the capacity to accommodate 12 students, the education center enables teachers to simultaneously monitor the surgical procedures of all students, provide real-time corrections, and share typical mistakes made by students on all screens, thereby reducing the likelihood of other students making the same errors.
Moreover, in the past, practicing microsurgery on laboratory animals required the sacrifice of a large number of animals. To address this issue, the NARL has developed bio-mimetic training aids for laboratory animals, such as skin, blood vessels, and catheters, allowing beginners to practice on these models before moving on to live animals. This approach significantly reduces the sacrifice of laboratory animals during training.
Furthermore, with enhanced technical skills, surgical success rates and animal survival rates can be increased, further reducing the sacrifice of experimental animals due to surgical failures. For instance, through the one-on-one, real-time correction model at the education center and initial practice with bio-mimetic training aids, trained students achieve a surgical success rate of nearly 100% in procedures such as cerebral vascular embolism surgery, compared to the general success rate of less than 80%, reducing the number of experimental animals sacrificed by at least 20% per experiment while improving the quality of experiments.
The completion of the Microsurgery Education Center not only benefits the testing and exploration of precise disease treatment strategies but also contributes to the development of other microscopy-related educational training. Therefore, in addition to microsurgery, the center has expanded its embryo manipulation training equipment to facilitate training in artificial reproductive technologies, drug sampling, and other animal operation techniques, making it the only training field in Taiwan that combines bio-mimetic surgery training, live microsurgery, embryo manipulation training, animal drug administration technique training, and scientific outreach education.
The NARL’s Microsurgery Education Center aims to develop as an international teaching and service platform, strengthening animal experimental technology capabilities, establishing a paradigm for reducing and optimizing animal experiments, and laying a solid foundation for the high-tech microsurgery animal model development, deepening Taiwan’s medical advancements and international standing in this field.