A scientific case for revisiting the embryonic chicken model in biomedical research

The availability of fertilised chicken eggs and the accessibility and rapid development of the avian embryo, have been utilised in biomedical scientific research to make fundamental discoveries including of developmental processes that are common to all vertebrates, advances in teratology, the understanding of tumour growth and metastasis, angiogenesis, cancer drug assessment and vaccine development as well as advances in understanding avian specific biology. However, recent innovations in chicken transgenesis, genome engineering and surrogate host technology in chickens have only been utilised in a few of these fields of research, specifically some areas of developmental biology, avian sex determination and immunology. To understand why other biomedical fields have not adopted modern chicken transgenic tools, we investigated the non-technical summaries of projects granted in the UK under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 between 2017-2023 to assess when and how chicken embryos are used in research, and if they were considered as a Replacement model for other species. HighlightsO_LIEvidence for a lack of uptake of the chicken embryo as a partial replacement model C_LIO_LICase examples of the reduction in animal numbers when chicken models are used C_LIO_LIProposed action plan for the avian developmental biology community C_LI O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=80 SRC="FIGDIR/small/623941v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (37K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@a78644org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@6007d4org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@a21fb3org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1cf5b90_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG