NIH Announces Initiative to Reduce Animal Research in Biomedical Portfolio

By: Galen Cobb
Thursday, May 8, 2025
On April 29, the National Institute of Health (NIH) announced an initiative to reduce the use of animals in NIH-funded research. A new Office of Research Innovation, Validation, and Application (ORIVA) will be established in the Office of the Director. ORIVA will be responsible for coordinating "NIH-wide efforts to develop, validate, and scale the use of non-animal approaches across the agency’s biomedical research portfolio" and will "expand funding and training in non-animal approaches". Additional changes are aimed at adapting funding processes: adding human relevancy to the evaluation criteria of funding opportunities, instituting mitigation training grant review staff against bias towards animal research, and integrating experts on alternative methods into study sections reviewing grants.

FASEB will be writing to NIH Director Jayanta Bhattacharya asking for the opportunity to provide additional stakeholder feedback on the rollout of this initiative.