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When Science Sets the Pace: OHSU's New ONPRC Resolution and the 3Rs

How six months of hard questions landed on a framework Oregon researchers already practice

On July 27, 2026, the OHSU Board of Directors passed Resolution No. 2026-07-27, a strategic framework for the future of the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC). It is, in plain terms, a plan to make a plan. It directs OHSU leadership, in collaboration with scientists, veterinarians, and animal welfare experts at ONPRC, to design a path that builds up the center’s work in New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), continues the nonhuman primate research that Oregon does uniquely well, and protects the welfare of the animals throughout. The colony size and the timeline for reaching it are things that plan is meant to propose, and both depend on NIH approval.

From Sanctuary Proposal to Strategic Framework

In February, the Board passed Resolution No. 2026-02-01, which asked OHSU to spend six months exploring whether ONPRC could be converted into a primate sanctuary. Over those six months, the people who knew the center best looked hard at the question and reached the answer many of them expected: a full sanctuary transition was not financially possible, and much of the science could not simply be moved elsewhere. This new resolution reflects what that process revealed. Instead of a fast, dramatic change driven by outside pressure, it lands where the evidence already is: some questions still need the nonhuman primate model, and the responsible move is to advance alternatives while protecting the science and the animals in the meantime.

A Resolution About All 3 Rs, Not Just One

For more than sixty years, ethics in animal research have been guided by three principles: Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement. In public debate, the first one gets nearly all of the attention, often with the assumption that anything short of replacement is a failure.

  • Replacement asks whether a research question can be answered without animals.
  • Reduction asks how to use the fewest animals needed for a valid result.
  • Refinement asks how to improve welfare and minimize or eliminate discomfort for every animal in a study.

We covered each in more depth in an earlier post on the 3Rs. It should be understood that these principles work together, and that any plan claiming to advance one of them must answer for all three.

This new resolution commits OHSU to expanding replacement through NAMs. It commits to a colony sized to genuine scientific need, which is reduction. And it commits, repeatedly, to protecting animal welfare and to consulting the veterinarians, behaviorists, and care staff who deliver refinement every day. The resolution does not treat these as competing goals, and neither should the plan that follows.

OHSU President Shereef Elnahal, M.D., M.B.A., made the same point to the Board at the July 27 meeting:

“[The 3Rs] have been a focus of ONPRC for a long time and, under the strategic plan that we will develop, they will only intensify. The people who will do the most to reduce the use of animals in research responsibly are, in my judgment, those people who understand those animals at the West Campus best and the scientists who do the critical work there.”

ONPRC’s Published Record on the 3Rs

**Replacement: Where Alternatives Already Do the Work **ONPRC scientists have been developing NAMs for over a decade, well before the current attention they’ve received. Researchers pair non-animal models with primate work rather than treating them as rivals. Speaking to the Board at the July 27 meeting, Adam Krieg, an associate professor of OB/GYN at OHSU and an ONPRC affiliate in reproductive biology, described a lab that runs in vitro ovarian tissue culture models, a form of NAM, coupled with verification and validation in the rhesus macaque. The alternative does the early work, and the animal model confirms what the alternative cannot yet determine on its own.

Krieg told the Board that after attending a recent Society of Toxicology meeting, where developing NAMs were featured, he came away seeing that most organ systems still lack a suitable NAM. He was equally direct about the limits in his own field: “NAMs are not yet able to model complex biology like menopause.” The goal is to keep closing that gap, and Oregon has been working at it longer than most.

**Reduction: Getting More From Fewer Animals **Reduction means designing studies so that each animal yields more data, making it so fewer animals are needed overall. ONPRC’s investment in advanced imaging is a direct example of this. Imaging allows scientists to take repeated, noninvasive measurements from the same animal over time, thereby replacing study designs that once required separate groups at each time point.

In work now available as a preprint, ONPRC neuroscientists are involved in a large, international collaborative effort of the PRIMatE Data and Resource Exchange (PRIME-DRE) to assemble more than 1,500 MRI brain scans from over 1,000 monkeys into a shared reference for how the primate brain develops and ages. Researchers anywhere can compare against that baseline instead of generating their own. Shared data is one of the most effective reduction tools there is, and Oregon helped build this one.

**Refinement: Welfare as Daily Science **Refinement is where ONPRC’s record is deepest, because welfare science is itself a field of study at the center. One study shows how a welfare improvement also improved the data:

ONPRC’s Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Core uses techniques like IVF and embryo transfer to build monkey models of human diseases, including Usher’s Syndrome and Hepatitis B, so researchers can study how those diseases work and develop ways to treat them (learn more about the Assisted Reproductive Technology Core). Semen collection is the first step in that process. Researchers and animal care staff at ONPRC adapted a closed box chair, already used in other research, for cooperative semen collection in male rhesus monkeys and discovered this refinement actually increased the quality of the samples collected. In the past, preparing for semen collection was performed by guiding a monkey to sit in an open chair via poles that clipped onto a collar the animal was fitted with prior to the study. This process could pose a risk for injury to care staff and could be difficult for some animals to learn. Once in the chair, the animal would need to be restrained, which added another element of stress. The new clear box chair allows the monkey to walk into it voluntarily right from his home enclosure. No poles, no collar, and no restraint of his neck or arms. As the study puts it, the animals are contained rather than restrained.

Every box chair monkey completed his training in about half the time of those trained in the older method, where only 75 percent completed it at all. For those who failed under the old method, other monkeys had to replace them, and those monkeys then needed training of their own. As for the semen samples, volume was roughly 75 percent higher and sperm concentration nearly doubled. Because stress is known to lower both measures, the better samples point to calmer, more comfortable animals. And higher quality samples mean each monkey goes through the procedure fewer times. The new box chair also offered other uses for refinements such as unsedated blood draws, and the authors noted its potential to train female monkeys for ultrasound exams, both of which would reduce the need for sedation. This one change made the work gentler for the monkeys, safer for the people, and better for the science.

Other refinements from the same record:

  • Social housing. Dr. Rhonda MacAllister, DVM, working alongside behaviorists Drs. Kristine Coleman and Allison Heagerty, identified which early behaviors predict a successful pairing, so staff can tell sooner when an introduction is working and when to step in.
  • Pain management. Dr. Andrew Haertel, DVM, and colleagues compared sustained-release formulations of a pain medication used in monkeys and found that one caused fewer injection site reactions.

Where OHSU Could Push the 3Rs Further

If the resolution is serious about all three Rs, the plan it produces is a chance to invest in each.

On replacement, OHSU can fund the infrastructure that enables Oregon’s NAMs work to scale up, and support scientists who extend their research to human-based platforms.

On reduction, continued investment in shared imaging resources and normative datasets spares every lab that uses them from having to build its own control groups.

On refinement, the plan can treat continued outdoor social housing as a condition to protect and can invest in building indoor housing that offers more space and manageable, modular group housing options for animals on study. Above all, the plan can do what the resolution already directs: keep ONPRC’s own scientists, veterinarians, and animal care staff at the center of every decision, because they are the leading welfare experts for the animals in their care.

Letting the Science Set the Pace

The takeaway from the past six months is that when a hard decision is guided by the evidence, it arrives at a defensible conclusion. The sanctuary question was asked in earnest and answered honestly. This resolution is not a rejection of progress on alternatives. It is a commitment to pursue that progress at the speed the science can support, while protecting the research only Oregon can do and the animals who make it possible.

That is what the 3Rs have always asked for: Replace where you can, Reduce where you must, Refine always, and let evidence, not pressure, decide when a method is ready. The ONPRC has been doing exactly that for years. The goal now is to make sure the plan that follows does the same.

Learn More: ONPRC’s 3R Research

  • Alldritt, S., Ramirez, J. S. B., de Wael, R. V., et al. (2024). Brain charts for the rhesus macaque lifespan. bioRxiv (preprint). PMID: 39257737
  • Haertel, A. J., Schultz, M. A., Colgin, L. M., & Johnson, A. L. (2021). Predictors of subcutaneous injection site reactions to sustained-release buprenorphine in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science, 60(3). PMID: 33906705
  • Houser, L. A., Ramsey, C., de Carvalho, F. M., Kolwitz, B., Naito, C., Coleman, K., & Hanna, C. B. (2021). Improved training and semen collection outcomes using the closed box chair for macaques. Animals, 11(8), 2384. PMID: 34438841
  • MacAllister, R. P., Heagerty, A., & Coleman, K. (2020). Behavioral predictors of pairing success in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). American Journal of Primatology, 82(1). PMID: 31916274

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