NIH Extramural Nexus (News)

Domestic Annual Reports for the reporting period of October 1, 2025, through September 30, 2026, are due to the NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) by December 1, 2026, for domestic institutions with an approved Domestic Animal Welfare Assurance.

NIH is committed to supporting rigorous and ethically conducted animal research that minimizes the number of animals needed to achieve scientifically valid results. Through a Request for Information, NIH seeks feedback on the feasibility, current capabilities, expected benefits, and expected burdens associated with annual reporting on the number of live, vertebrate animals subject to and defined by the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. 

Information and other web resources from the NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) have recently migrated to the NIH Grants and Funding hub.

These Survey Results help inform NIH’s ongoing efforts to reduce time and effort spent by Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) administrators and principal investigators (PIs) while maintaining the integrity and credibility of research findings and protection of research animals.

NIH announced the award of contracts for the Standardized Organoid Modeling (SOM) Center, a national resource that will be dedicated to using cutting-edge technologies to develop standardized organoid-based new approach methodologies that deliver robust, reproducible, and patient-centered research findings.

In July 2025, NIH announced it will no longer develop new funding opportunities focused exclusively on animal models of human disease. Rather, going forward, new funding opportunities will be designed more broadly with language that also encourages various approaches be considered.

On April 29, NIH announced it is prioritizing human-focused research and reducing animal use in research. To further this initiative, all new Notices of Funding Opportunity that relate to animal model systems (NOFOs) must now also support human-focused approaches such as clinical trials, real world data, or new approach methods (NAMs).

The short answer: collaborations can offer significant benefits for scientific discovery.  However, there are a number of components to be considered prior to establishing a collaboration when research involves animal activity.