Smart ventilated cage systems for next-level experimental design and monitoring of specialized animal models.

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PROJECT SUMMARY Murine models play a key role in a broad range of research areas given their comparable physiology to humans and other mammals, known genetic backgrounds, and the ease of their housing and maintenance. However, as we have gained a greater understanding of physiology, there has been a drive to create more sophisticated models that better represent human disease progression and response to treatments. This has led to the generation and use of mouse models with unique genetic backgrounds, behaviors, or susceptibility to diseases. While these models have been of enormous value, they require regular monitoring and may need special housing conditions (such as altered light/dark cycles) to maintain their health and successfully carry out needed research. Incorporating this monitoring adds significant operational burden on facility staff and researchers, and may also add to animal stress. Furthermore, even with increased physical monitoring of mice, important changes in health status can be missed during non-observational periods, making this a challenging problem to address. To address these issues, the Institute of Comparative Medicine (ICM) at Columbia University Irving Medical Center will acquire and install Tecniplast Digital Ventilated Cages (DVC) and Rack Environmental Monitoring modules for its specialized animal resources. The features of the DVC system will improve ICM operations by: 1) Providing automated, 24/7 remote monitoring of various parameters linked to animal welfare and environmental conditions of the animal facility; 2) triggering of automated alarms in particular conditions requiring immediate attention (e.g., decreased spontaneous mouse activity, water flooding, limited water bottle or food availability); 3) setting specific light/dark cycle for individual cages with the use of LEDDY units; and 4) reducing the number of cage changes needed in some circumstances (e.g. single-housed mice), reducing bedding waste. Implementation of DVC cages will be targeted toward specialized shared resources that utilize the most complex disease models, which will lead to a disproportionately large impact on animal welfare, facility operations, experimental capability of researchers, and the reproducibility and rigor of research within ICM.