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Animal experiments? SMAFIRA searches for alternatives
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The EU requires the possibility of animal-free alternatives to be examined before animal experiments can be carried out. The computer scientist Mariana Lara Neves has developed an online tool to make the corresponding research easier.
Ms Neves, you have developed the online tool SMAFIRA. Who are the intended users?
SMAFIRA is aimed at scientists who experiment with or without laboratory animals and are interested in the 3R principles. 3R seeks to reduce and replace animal experiments or to refine the conditions for laboratory animals. Our online tool makes it easier to locate 3R-relevant information for an experiment and to find alternatives.
How exactly does SMAFIRA work?
SMAFIRA stand for “Smart Feature-based Interactive Ranking”. It sorts documents, for example scientific studies, according to their relevance for 3R. Our tool is based on MEDLINE, the world’s largest medical science database with citations for more than 30 million articles, and on PUBMED, the MEDLINE search interface. In order to use SMAFIRA, you must first of all enter the relevant number under which an animal experiment study of interest to one’s work has been filed at PUBMED into the SMAFIRA search interface. This number is known as an “identifier” and can be found at the top of the study. SMAFIRA then looks for 3R-relevant experiments that refer to the animal experiment study in question and ranks them.
What benefits does SMAFIRA offer?
Just like PUBMED, SMAFIRA is free of charge and freely accessible. Because the tool uses artificial intelligence, it continues to develop. It allows you to search in a targeted manner for specific criteria, for example experiments using human or animal cells or tissues tests. We want to stress that we are improving SMAFIRA continuously. So it’s worth sticking with it.
