December 2000 News

Vera Rogiers and Horst Spielmann Receive Doerenkamp-Zbinden Award

December 17, 2000

The Doerenkamp-Zbinden Foundation has named two leading researchers in the alternatives field as recipients of its 2000 award. Vera Rogiers and Horst Spielmann received the prestigious award for their scientific achievements and their political efforts on behalf of animal welfare.

The Doerenkamp-Zbinden Foundation is a German-Swiss organization established in 1987 to promote "a realistic protection of animals used for research purposes." The foundation awards up to two prizes per year to persons who have, "in a special way, contributed to the protection of animals in research or the implementation of animal alternatives."

Vera Rogiers, professor of toxicology at the Free University in Brussels, was selected for the award for her achievements in establishing in vitro models for pharmaco-toxicological purposes, as well as for her initiatives to establish a Platform for animal alternatives, both at the national and at the international level.

Rogiers' research focused mainly on the development of in vitro methods, in particular the development of long-term cultures of hepatocytes, with the aim of replacing the use of live animals in pharmacological and toxicological research. She has published more than 150 papers in international refereed journals on this topic and has acted as an invited speaker at more than 80 international meetings.

In 1998 Rogier founded the Belgium Platform for Alternative Methods and, more recently, she acted as co-founder of ECOPA, the European Consensus Platform for Alternatives.

Dr. Horst Spielmann was honored for his scientific work leading to the substitution of in vitro models for animal testing and for his long-standing political and administrative activities in the area of animal protection.

Spielmann founded ZEBET, the National Centre for Documentation and Evaluation of Alternatives to Animal Experiments in Germany in 1989 and has since acted as its director. ZEBET is active in documentation and education, as well as in the development and validation of animal alternatives. Spielmann played a key role in getting two new in vitro methods--a skin corrosion test and a phototoxicity test--accepted for regulatory purposes by the European Union Member States.

Bert van Zutphen, a previous recipient of the award, presented the prizes to Rogiers and Spielmann on October 28 at the INVITOX meeting in Spain.

For more information about the Doerenkamp-Zbinden Foundation and the awards, go here.