Animal Core
Core Directors:
Mitchell Drumm, PhD
Anna van Heeckeren, DVM - [email for Core login data]
BRTT Core Presentation August 29 2005
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The BRTT Animal Core will be incorporated into an existing, highly productive Animal Core (see publication list, in references) so that there will be vast experience upon which to draw. It will comprise three separate but integral units, 1) Breeding, 2) Genotyping, and 3) Substance Administration and Tissue Harvesting. The Director, Mitchell Drumm, PhD, has been involved with the Pediatric Animal Core since 2001, and the co-director, Anna van Heeckeren, DVM, MS, since 1997. Technical and professional personnel work toward a common goal, which is to ease the burden of research and reduce the number of and pain and distress experienced by animal subjects. Since the BRTT investigators will increase the work load on an already busy Animal Core, additional personnel will be hired, although the existing Core will provide training and technical assistance as needed. The Pediatric Animal Core has extensive experience in breeding and maintaining specialty mice (mutant, transgenic, immunodeficient), genotyping mice, and distributing them and their byproducts, as well as vast experience in injecting mice (tail vein, transtracheal, intranasal, peritoneal), and harvesting and processing tissues and fluids (blood, peritoneal and bronchoalveolar lavage). To accommodate the increased data management required for new strains and new investigators, a new, expanded commercial database will be purchased.
The Breeding Unit will work closely with Animal Resource Center (ARC) personnel in caring for the mice. The ARC is an AAALAC-I accredited site, supplied with ventilated cage racks with microisolator cages. ARC personnel provide routine housing (every other week, cages, bedding, food and water are changed), but any care that is required beyond this will be managed by the Animal Core. At the outset, four specialty strains of mice will be required by participating investigators: mouse models of hemophilia and CF and mice transgenic for human receptors designated for targeting. In addition, rabbits and rats are used. Wild type animals will be obtained from standard vendors, but specialty mice can be expensive and difficult to obtain in timely fashion. Therefore colonies will be bred by the Core. Personnel in the Breeding Unit will collect tissue samples for genotyping purposes, and hand the samples to the Genotyping Unit. Genotyping personnel will provide the genotyping results to Breeding personnel, who will enter the genotyping results into the colony management database.
Animal Core personnel will administer compounds (test and control), typically i.v. or by aerosol, and/or tumor cells to the animals, as instructed by and working with the investigator. Since an aerosol device is not currently available at the University, one will be purchased to accommodate the large number of animals that need to be dosed at one time. Animals will be monitored following procedures for clinical signs, such as body temperature, body weight, coat quality, activity, and alertness, and for tumor size, as appropriate. The Core will also take responsibility for freezing and storage of samples and for shipping of samples or mice as required. We expect the following projects to use this core: Drs. Davis, Pagel, Gao, Oleinick and Fitzmaurice from Case, Dr. Cooper from Copernicus, Dr. Boiarski from iMEDD.
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