ICAL: Impact of Cannabinoids Across Lifespan: Animal Core

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PROJECT SUMMARY: ANIMAL CORE The primary goal of the Animal Core is to provide a standardized, consistent supply of adolescent and adult mice and rats of both sexes treated with THC or its vehicle for use by all ICAL projects. The Core’s trained staff will schedule treatments, behavioral testing and tissue collection, and will administer THC to animals at various ages, treatment regimens, and doses. After treatment and washout, animals will be transferred to the labs of individual ICAL projects (Molecular, Synaptic, and Behavioral). A second objective of the Animal Core is to facilitate consistent and well-validated chemogenetic (DREADD) circuit-control methodologies in ICAL projects. The Core will provide space and instrumentation (stereotaxic frame, virus injection equipment) for viral vector injection, and will train laboratory staff on procedures and protocols to ensure consistent implementation. The core will also maintain and distribute colonies of transgenic Cre driver mouse and rat lines, enabling chemogenetic manipulations of targeted neuronal subtypes including dopamine (TH:Cre or DAT:Cre), as described in individual projects. The third objective of the Animal Core is to establish and maintain an annotated repository of biological material obtained from animals treated in adolescence or adulthood with THC or vehicle. Biomaterial (brain peripheral tissues, fecal matter) from various ICAL activities (pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics studies, phenotyping studies, projects) will be collected, catalogued using a computerized bar-coding system and stored at -80oC. An annotated database describing available samples and associated behavioral/physiological data will be created and made available upon request to qualified researchers worldwide. This unique resource, the first in its type, will (i) foster new collaborations between ICAL and diverse research groups around the world; and (ii) open up adolescent cannabinoid research to study by groups unequipped to perform similar treatment regimens themselves. In sum, the Animal Core will be essential to ICAL’s success and broader impact. The Core will develop and implement fully characterized, consistent, and pharmacologically relevant adolescent THC exposure regimens for use in each project, and standardize use of chemogenetic methodologies across projects. The Core will also generate, catalog, and distribute tissue from these valuable animals, opening this large and rich resource to scientists around the world. !