Boreham, T. 2019. Using novel equipment to aid reduction and replacement of the ferret model in influenza transmission. Animal Technology and Welfare 18(1), 59-61.

The ferret model has long been the “gold standard” animal model for studying human influenza infection and is used all around the world for transmission studies. Professor Wendy Barclay and her team have used ferrets at Imperial College for 10 years for studying influenza. In this poster we describe current practice and introduce how novel equipment can aid answering key questions in transmission, reducing and replacing sentinel ferrets in the process. Using funding from the NC3Rs the team designed “The Influenza Virus Transmission Tunnel (IVTT)”. In the long term, a reduction in ferrets will be possible as the data from the IVTT is seen to be dependable especially when testing new strains of virus.