Laboratory and facility accreditation

In France, legislation requires an institutional license before any in-vivo testing can be undertaken. NEUROFIT facility holds a valid accreditation issued by the French Ministry of Agriculture. Compliance inspections are regularly performed by the veterinary authority.

Animal Ethics

All animal procedures performed at NEUROFIT must be in compliance with the existing legislation and regulations (European Directive 2010/63/EU incorporated in French law, amended by Decree No. 2013-118 on the 1st of February 2013). All in vivo experimental procedures implemented by NEUROFIT are reviewed and approved by an independent government accredited ethic committee (CEEA35). Our project application must clearly describe that there is no alternative to the use of animal and the 3R rule (Replacement, Reduction and Refinement) is taken into account.

The external ethic committee review our application (Neurofit staff or any member involved in our project are not allowed to attend the review) and return to us their comments which must be addressed and then Neurofit makes the amendments to the project if necessary. The ethic committee includes several vet members and non-scientific members, and they are all very punctilious about animal welfare. Once the ethic committee is satisfied with the project, they inform the ministry of research which performs a compliance review and delivers the authorization if all is well. No animal works can be initiated without the issue of this authorization.

There are 9 Members in the IACUC (aka. Internal Animal Welfare body) which meet about 6 times per year along with our veterinarian to discuss animal welfare and how to better implement the 3R's rule in our laboratory and general working practices:
Refinement: Constantly working with our staff, IACUC and veterinarian to improve the animal housing and experimental procedure in the lab.
Reduction: Preparation of ethical permits to optimize animal use and reduce as much as possible the number of animals to be used, or the number of procedures or the duration that the procedures will be performed.
Replacement: when possible, finding alternatives to the use of animals for research

Research Tax Credit

NEUROFIT has Research Tax Credit (Crédit Impôt Recherche - CIR) accreditation. Research Tax Credit is a tax incentive for R&D that gives eligible research-based French companies (subject to corporate tax in France) the ability to claim tax refund of up to 30% of their expenditure for R&D outsourced and performed by NEUROFIT.