Animal research

The welfare of all the animals that we use continues to be a top priority. Compliance with relevant laws and regulations is a minimum baseline and underpins our own global Bioethics Policy and animal care standards.  
This includes ensuring that qualified veterinary staff are involved in the development and implementation of all animal care programmes and that everyone working with laboratory animals is trained and competent in their allocated responsibilities.  

As well as mandatory inspections by government authorities, we have a formal programme of inspections of our internal facilities, conducted every two years by our own, highly qualified staff.

To supplement our internal capabilities and expertise, we outsource a proportion of our animal research to contract research organisations (CROs). These organisations are required to comply with our high ethical standards, as set out in our Bioethics policy and standards of animal care, and we conduct regular inspections to ensure our requirements are being met.

We are working with MedImmune to align our approach to inspection regimes for both internal and external facilities.  We may also use external accreditation to evaluate and ensure compliance.

The content of this page was externally assured by Bureau Veritas, February 2009