Impact Funding Resources
Rodents are often singly housed for a period during their recovery and cage enrichment items are removed to avoid injuries. There are opportunities to refine the care of rodents through enhanced monitoring of parameters such as body temperature and improvements to the housing environment after surgery. The aim of this Challenge is to develop a shelter for rodents to provide warmth and a means to monitor the animals to improve post-operative care, which is critical to aid recovery and minimise any pain and distress.
End Date04 Nov 2024 Funding AmountUpto GBP 150k Funding Resource TypeGrant
Funding ProviderNational Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs)
Grant
National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs)
The aim of this Challenge is to develop a shelter for rodents to provide warmth and a means to monitor the animals to improve post-operative care, which is critical to aid recovery and minimise any pain and distress.
• The aim of this Challenge is to develop an easy-to-use and affordable shelter that provides warmth and can be placed in any type of cage post-surgery to improve the post-operative care of rodents. The shelter should be equipped with controllable heat to keep the rodent warm and made of a transparent material to aid visual monitoring while avoiding disturbing the animal.
• The shelter should be equipped with sensors for real-time non-invasive telemetry to monitor vital signs and indirect parameters of stress and/or pain such as heart rate, respiratory rate and body temperature. Mice and rats are prey species and can mask behavioural indicators of pain and suffering in the presence of humans who they perceive as potential predators [9]. Automated monitoring would remove the effects of human intervention and permit monitoring during the dark cycle.
• The addition of a wireless alert to a mobile device, for example, if the heart or respiratory rate goes above or below pre-defined frequencies which might indicate pain or suffering, would enable timely welfare intervention. The potential for an automated feedback loop to adjust the heat source to the animal’s body temperature within the device would also be desirable. While advanced automated rodent home cage monitoring systems are available, they are not tailored to the purpose of this Challenge.
• The shelter would have broad applicability across the bioscience sector where surgical animals are used including academia, contract research organisations and the pharmaceutical industry. It could also be used for non-surgical models such as cold sensitive strains (e.g. BTBR ob/ob mice and nude mice) and for mice required to be single housed for specific measurements such as food intake or in cases of male mice incompatibility. Additionally, the shelter could be used by veterinary clinics in the care of small animal pets, where there is increasing demand for veterinary care and surgical intervention.
