2018 Lush Science Prize.

The Lush Prize supports animal-free testing by awarding money prizes of up to £350,000 per year to the most effective projects and individuals who have been working towards the goal of replacing animals in product or ingredient safety testing. Since its inception in 2012, the Lush Prize has distributed almost £2 million. Prizes are awarded for developments in five strategic areas: Science; Lobbying; Training; Public Awareness; and Young Researchers. In 2015, the judges also awarded a Black Box prize for the development of the skin sensitisation Adverse Outcome Pathway and its associated assays. The Science Prize is awarded to researchers whose work the judging panel believe to have made the most significant contribution, in the preceding year, to the replacement of animal testing. This 2018 Science Background paper outlines the research projects that were presented to the Prize judges as potential candidates for the 2018 Lush Science Prize award. To obtain an overview of developments in the field of animal replacement in toxicity research, recent work by the relevant scientific institutions and projects in this area, including the OECD, CAAT, ECVAM, UK NC3Rs, US Tox21 Programme, the ToxCast programme and EU-ToxRisk, was reviewed. Recent developments in toxicity testing research were investigated by searching the relevant literature. Abstracts from conferences focusing on animal replacement in toxicity testing that were held in the preceding 12 months, were also analysed, including those from the 2017 10th World Congress on Alternatives and Animals in the Life Sciences and the 2018 Society of Toxicology annual conference.