Facts and Figures
Use of animals in research
You can view our list of live 2024 project titles as of January 2024. This list will be updated annually.
1 January 2023 to 31 December 2023
A breakdown by species of the number of animal procedures carried out at Newcastle University from 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2023:
Newcastle University’s use of animals in research contributes to a wide range of research including animal welfare, cancer, vaccine development, heart disease and stroke.
- Heart and circulatory diseases: in 2021 there were 163,888 deaths caused by heart and circulatory diseases and 7.6 million people living with these diseases in the UK (British Heart Foundation, 2022)
- Cancer: in the UK, there are more than 375,000 new cases of cancer a year, which works out at more than 1000 a day. These lead to 166,000 deaths each year, equivalent to more than 450 per day (Cancer Research UK, 2022)
- Stroke: there are 100,000 strokes in the UK each year with 1.3 million strike survivors living with the after effects such as paralysis and problems with speaking and understanding (Stroke Association, 2022)
Of the animals listed above, 13 domestic fowl were used in animal welfare research.
Therefore, the total used in medical research was: 16,875.
The definition of the threshold for regulation is a procedure which causes an animal to experience a level of pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm equivalent to, or higher than, that caused by inserting a hypodermic needle according to good veterinary practice. We record numbers of animals which underwent procedures which were below the threshold for regulation.
Procedures classified as below the threshold for regulation were:
| Type of animal | Number of procedures |
|---|---|
| Mouse | 7775 |
| Fish | 992 |
| Total | 8767 |
Therefore, the total number of procedures which were above the threshold for regulation was: 8,121.
Archived details of animal procedures carried out at Newcastle University from 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2022.
Further information
Find out more about our research involving animals and animal welfare: Centre for Behaviour and Evolution.