Ventilated Mouse Cages for NIH Funded Construction Projects

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This animal resource improvement application requests funds to purchase ventilated mouse cages and animal transfer stations for animal facilities at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), supporting PHS-funded researchers. Specifically, the requested funds would be invested in caging in 36 single-sided ventilated cage racks in 10 housing rooms in the existing Gillespie Vivarium. Located in the basement of Gillespie Neuroscience Research Facility and central to recent state-of-the-art laboratory construction, including two 50,000 ASF laboratory buildings (Sprague and Hewitt Hall), the requested 2,268 mouse cages, installed in a combined holding area of 1,515 ASF, also are directly adjacent to two NCRR-funded construction projects: the completed Genetically Modified Rodent Facility (GMRF) and the Procedural/Behavioral/Housing Suites (PBHS), currently in design. The short-term goal of this project is to address an immediate and serious shortfall in mouse housing for ongoing PHS-supported biomedical research by UCI faculty. Mouse use has increased at an average rate of 30+% per year over the last eight years, due in large part to key faculty recruitment combined with increasing use of transgenics. In the past three years the campus has invested $2 million in ventilated caging, supplemented by a successful $649,000 animal resource improvement application to NCRR in 2002. The campus plans to invest a minimum of $3 million in non-NCRR funds in caging and associated equipment for campus facilities in the next three years. The long-term goal of the centrally administered University Laboratory Animal Resources (ULAR) is to develop quality animal housing at a pace that matches intensive laboratory construction and faculty recruitment. This supports the agency's mission by creating a growing capacity to support PHS-funded biomedical researchers.