I applaud the Oregon legislature for tabling a misguided bill that would have shut down the Oregon National Primate Research Center. The bill, HB3978, would have phased out research with monkeys, prohibiting such research by May 1, 2029.
While this did not pass, the legislature added language to their budget bill before adjourning to force a report due in January to show that no state general funds are used for costs associated with operations at ONPRC, and to provide a plan to close the center if it’s NIH grant income drops by 25%.
In response, ONPRC Director Rudolph “Skip” Bohm said, “OHSU worked throughout the legislative session to share factual information about the Oregon National Primate Research Center and dispel the false attacks on science and our dedicated workforce. We are pleased that all legislation to close the center or eliminate certain types of funding for the center failed.
He added, “Budget notes are not legislation or law. OHSU will utilize the resources to both highlight the lifesaving work happening at the Oregon National Primate Research Center and develop a plan to partner with the state legislature to support our patients, people, and the welfare of the animals at the ONPRC in the event deep federal cuts to research funding impact the center.”
While ONPRC avoided an immediate shutdown, we should use this borrowed time to push back on misinformation and heighten awareness about the truth of the critical role nonhuman primate play in biomedical cures.
The attempt to close ONPRC was just the latest in a series of efforts to shut down the center, starting back in spring when the activist groups ran broadcast ads against it, followed by a statement from Oregon’s governor to that she’d like to see the center close.
In ONPRC’s case there was a lot of misinformation about how ONPRC’s funding might be diverted to other uses at the Oregon Health and Science University, which oversees ONPRC. That’s not how primate center funding works. ONPRC and other National Primate Research Centers receive research-specific grant awards from the National Institutes of Health, research foundations, industry partners, or from philanthropists. These funds can only be used for specific research projects. And they aren’t being diverted from other uses, nor can they be repurposed for those uses if the center were to close.
Some proponents of halting animal research claim it’s cruel. That’s just not so. For starters, there are strict regulations on the use of all animals in research and nonhuman primates in particular. They are only used for studies where no other viable alternative exists. And studies with NHPs must first be approved by NIH scientific peer review panels to ensure the research question being asked is important to human health, that the question can only be addressed in NHPs and not another species like mice or fish. Furthermore, proposed studies must also be approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, not to mention following all federal regulations including oversight from the federal Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, the U.S. Department of Agriculture which conducts inspections and enforces the Animal Welfare Act, and the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC International), which monitors animal care within the United States and accredits research institutions.
There are also arguments that the research is unnecessary and outdated when there are New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), such as computer modeling. But that’s simply not true, either. While there have been many advances NAMs and they are currently being used to achieve many biomedical goals, they are far from being sufficient to replace animals research including research in NHPs. More work is needed to improve to improve and validate their translatability and relevance to humans. Importantly, much of that work will require qualification and validation via comparative studies to NHPs and other animal models, that have, for decades provided the gold standard for establishing in vivo proof of concept and safety before advancing a potential new breakthrough to human clinical trials. To date, no non-animal model can adequately model the complex biology of a living person or animal including the immune system, the brain, metabolism and physiology to name a few. NHP research was essential to achieve breakthroughs in Covid, gene therapy, brain-computer interfaces, infectious disease, neuroscience and more. Just last week, a new drug to prevent HIV infection was approved, and would not have been possible without the contributions of WaNPRC researchers and NHPs. It’s important to recognize that for most biomedical questions, NAMs are still not sufficient to replace animals. Furthermore, we should not think of animals and NAMs as competitive strategies, that one will replace the other. The value of NAMs models is not just limited to their potential to reduce our reliance NHPs but rather, we very often use these approaches as complementary studies alongside in vivo NHP studies because they can help us answer different kinds of questions.
In support of these goals, at WaNPRC, we are working to promote the discovery, refinement and validation of alternative methods to complement our NHP studies and reduce the number of animals required for our research. And we are going to invest in that, in line with NIH priorities.
I share ONPRC Director Skip Bohm’s vision that our goal is to reduce the need for NHPs. We’ve already started the work, and we’ll keep going it. That won’t happen if activists and other succeed in shutting that research down altogether.
So I commend the Oregon legislature for pausing their effort for now. It will allow scientists to focus on science and actually move in the direction that we all want to go.
Dr. Deborah H Fuller
Director, WaNPRC