Modern Equipment for UMKC’s Shared-use Laboratory Animal Research Core Facility to Advance Biomedical Research-Related Operations - Project Summary / Abstract The proposal requests funding for the purchase an modern animal cage and rack washer system with bottle washing carts with rotary spray and universal basket rack for cages, as well as a cloud-based environmental monitoring system for UMKC’s Laboratory Animal Research Core facility. The former is to provide the Laboratory Animal Research Core facility with an advanced, environmental-friendly, high performing and high-throughput system that will assist in and improve facility operations. As part of the high performing and high-throughput system capacity of the system two bottle washing carts with rotary spray and two universal basket rack for cages are being requested to facilitate higher staff and facility efficiency and reduce down-time of the system. The proposed modern equipment will aid in the consistency and accuracy of animal care through improved environmental sustainability and automation of animal facility operation. The latter is to provide the Laboratory Animal Research Core facility with a cloud storage and web-based system to replace the current system that is limited to a local server and can only be accessed in the office of the core director and not elsewhere in the core facility or the institution. Further, it will enable core staff to monitor environmental conditions from any computer improving both efficiency of operations and increased responsiveness to animal care needs and users, as well as enable core staff to more effectively and quickly communicate with the university’s Central Facilities Management team to control more readily environmental conditions. The modern equipment will enable detection, measurement, monitoring, recording, and reporting environmental extrinsic factors to allow experiments reproducibly conducted under similar environmental conditions and animal care, husbandry settings. The novel and modern equipment will take advantage of existing resources while allowing core staff to detect, monitor, quantify, record, analyze in real-time and report these factors and allow for the longitudinal assessment of environmental factors, a capability that currently does not exist for the core and that a routine upgrade would not be able to accomplish. The proposed systems will serve a diverse and increasing community of NIH-funded researchers at UMKC meeting the current increased and future needs for biomedical research, as well as modernize training in health-related research. The proposed equipment will accelerate research progress and enhance the rigor, quality and breadth of research results and generate data of the highest impact possible. Overall, these advancements will allow NIH-funded UMKC investigators active in biomedical research conduct research on diseases that affect significant and increasing portions of the U.S. population including minorities affected by disparities in health care delivery, to determine the underlying causes of human disease, help design future therapeutics and improve health care.
