Advanced environmental cage monitoring to improve facility operations, animal welfare, and research outcomes for UCLA’s rodent Behavioral Testing Core users. - Project Summary/Abstract The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) rodent Behavioral Testing Core (BTC) in collaboration with the Division of Laboratory Animal Medicine (DLAM) are seeking to convert the current static, unventilated cage racks to Tecniplast’s Digital Ventilated Cage System (DVC). This system leverages the power of machine learning to remotely monitor, record, and interpret numerous external environmental factors, including temperature, noise, vibration, light, motion, as well as in-cage information, including animal location and activity, animal fighting and aggression, early pathology detection, changes in urination, cage sanitation, and food and water status. Enhancing the reliability and reproducibility of preclinical rodent research is paramount for translation of novel therapeutics into realized human treatments. Computational analysis has identified both environmental variables (e.g., temperature, humidity, noise, etc.) and human exposure as significant factors contributing to inconsistencies in research outcomes. The goal of this proposal is to modernize current rodent housing and enhance the reproducibility and rigor of preclinical studies performed by the rodent Behavioral Testing Core (BTC) and collaborators by 1) providing a more efficient, stable, and controlled vivarium environment, 2) improving animal welfare and study-related outcomes with real-time tracking and alerts, and 3) collecting critical extrinsic information to quantify their impact on the biological and behavioral output of the housed mice. Upgrading to the DVC system will significantly enhance operational efficiency by decreasing required cage changes, thus lowering the necessary human exposure. With remote monitoring, we aim to improve the health status of mice through the automatic detection of aberrant behaviors (e.g., sickness, fighting), thereby allowing earlier intervention for improved health outcomes. Finally, automated collection of extrinsic information will significantly enhance the rigor of BTC client experiments by providing confirmation of carefully controlled environments, as well as novel metrics for behavioral analysis, including activity levels and circadian rhythms, data previously unavailable to Core users. Collectively, we expect these upgrades to significantly enhance the reliability and replicability of data produced in the BTC. Additionally, the DVC system will have a significant impact on researchers across the UCLA campus. The BTC has designed and implemented research studies with laboratories from over thirty different departments from four different schools across UCLA. In the last year, BTC projects have been funded by grants from numerous NIH institutions, including NINDS, NIMH, NIDCR, NIDA, NCI, and NIA. The BTC resides within the Psychology department and shares vivarium space with other behavioral researchers, who will also have access to data generated with the DVC system and will benefit from these upgrades.
