New Publication Alert!
A new Beyond3Rs study conducted in collaboration with the 3Rs Collaborative is out now in Plos One! "Do we still need a canary in the coal mine for laboratory animal facilities? A systematic review of environmental health monitoring versus soiled bedding sentinels" can be accessed here.
Despite increasing evidence that Environmental Health Monitoring (EHM) is an effective and cost efficient method to replace live sentinel animals in rodent colony health surveillance, many research institutions continue to use live soiled bedding sentinels. Some veterinarians and others responsible for rodent colony health monitoring remain cautious of the evidence supporting this new technology.
This systematic review found that all types of EHM appear to be superior to soiled bedding sentinels at detecting pathogens. EHM methods show an overall sensitivity of 97%, compared to 77% for traditional sentinels. This supports the Replacement of live soiled bedding sentinel animals with other EHM methods.
This figure shows the detection rate of A) each rodent health monitoring strategy: soiled bedding sentinels (SBS), exhaust dust testing (EDT), sentinel-free soiled bedding (SFSB), or direct colony sampling (DCS), across B) pathogens coded by type (bacteria/fungus, ectoparasites, endoparasites, viruses) as investigated in 30 research articles.
Beyond3Rs at 2024 UFAW meeting in Portugal
In July, Drs. Joseph Garner and Anna Ratuski attended the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare meeting in Porto, Portugal. They presented new epidemiological work on the prevalence of barbering (plucking of fur or whiskers) in laboratory mice. Stay tuned for the upcoming publication!
New Publication Alert!
MLAS alumni Kendall Coden recently published part of her Masters work in Translational Psychiatry, titled "Making bloodwork work: the impact of sample collection, processing, and storage on plasma glutathione measurement, and implications for translation." Read the article here.
Glutathione, its precursors, and/or metabolites serve as biomarkers of disease risk, therapeutic targets, and measures of treatment response. However, there are currently several different methods for collection, processing, storage, and calculation of summary measures of plasma glutathione metabolism, within and between preclinical and clinical research. Different methods used in collection and processing of samples can hamper reproducibility (preclinical or clinical), and translation (between preclinical and clinical work). Kendall's project investigated how four different approaches to sample preparation can affect plasma glutathione levels, finding that several variables (e.g. storage temperatures) impact the measured levels of glutathione.
This paper outlines a gold-standard evidence-based methodology for collection, processing, and storage of plasma used for glutathione quantification, which will help with reproducibility and translation of research between preclinical (animal) trials and clinical (human) trials. Congratulations, Kendall!
New Publication Alert!
MLAS Student Kyna Byrd recently published their Masters work in Plos One, titled "Pebble to the Metal: A Boulder Approach to Enrichment for Danio rerio." Read the article here.
Zebrafish are increasingly used in laboratories, but little is known about how to effectively provide environmental enrichment for them. Providing images of environmental substrates outside of the tank is one option that is biologically relevant, hygienic, and inexpensive. Kyna's project demonstrated that zebrafish have a preference for pictures of pebbles placed underneath the tank, and that this form of environmental enrichment reduced levels of cortisol in the tank (indicating lower levels of stress in these fish).
On the basis of these results, Stanford facilities are now implementing under-tank pebble pictures for zebrafish tanks.
This project was a collaborative effort between several students, postdocs, and faculty in the Department of Comparative Medicine at Stanford University. Congratulations, Kyna!
Official Launch of Beyond3Rs
After much anticipation, we are so excited to share this website with the world. Beyond3Rs has been in the works for many years and we can't wait to continue developing this program.
Learn more about our mission here. Please contact us if you'd like to get involved.
New Publication Alert!
A new study titled "Risk factors for barbering in laboratory mice" was recently published in Scientific Reports, led by Laboratory Animal Welfare Research Fellow Anna Ratuski and colleagues. Read the paper here.
Barbering is a common abnormal behavior in laboratory mice, where mice pluck their own fur and/or the fur or whiskers of their cage mates. This presents a concern for welfare and research quality, as well as serving as a spontaneous model of trichotillomania (a hair-pulling disorder in humans).
Causes and prevention of barbering are poorly understood, and since initial work in this area was done 20 years ago, mouse husbandry has changed dramatically. This study provides an updated analysis of risk factors for barbering based on point prevalence of hair loss in 2544 cages over one year. Certain risk factors for barbering, such as sex and breeding status, have persisted despite changes in housing. There are also differences in prevalence based on genetic background, housing system, time of year, and a “hotspot” effect showing spatial clustering of barbering. Findings can be used to increase understanding of this behavior and to inform changes in husbandry to reduce its prevalence.
New Publication Alert!
A new Beyond3Rs collaboration has been published in Applied Animal Behaviour, titled "Behavioral or nutritional drive: which motivation affects rates of food grinding in CD1 mice?". Read the paper here.
Some laboratory mice gnaw their food into powder, which they do not ingest. The ground-up food fills the cage, resulting in miscalculations of food consumption, welfare issues with blocked water valves and frequent cage handling, more frequent cage changes, and economic issues of food wastage.
This study, following on from previous work, sought to determine if the motivations behind food grinding were related to a mouse’s innate behavioral drive to gnaw or rather a nutritional drive to seek out macronutrient components in the feed. We replicated previous results where high fat treatments (either shell-on sunflower seeds or a diet with macronutrient equivalence to a sunflower kernel), but not the method of delivery of the higher-fat treatments, decreased the amount of ground food produced per cage. Further, the composition of the gnawed food changed over the course of the study, generally with protein increasing and fat decreasing in the gnawed feed, especially after treatments were removed. We also replicated previous results which found differences in the composition of the gnawed feed in comparison to the original diet. These results support the hypothesis that food grinding behavior is driven by a nutritional motivation, not a behavioral one.
Congratulations to 2024 MLAS graduates!
Sydney Steele, pictured above with supervisor Dr. Joseph Garner, is one of our recent graduates from the MLAS program. Her project focused on how wound healing in mice is impacted by oxytocin and social support from a companion. Congratulations to Sydney and all other 2024 MLAS graduates!
Anna Ratuski was awarded a Grant in Laboratory Animal Science from the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science
This grant will fund a project focusing on transport stress in mice. We know transport is a stressor for animals, but whole-animal impacts of transport, particularly on behavior or other indicators of health and well-being, are not well studied in mice. Results from this work will inform more comprehensive guidelines on appropriate acclimation periods following transport for mice, including how outcomes might vary depending on characteristics of transport, mouse sex, or genetic strain. Appropriate acclimation periods have the potential to improve both animal welfare and reproducibility of research outcomes.
Joseph Garner, David Bentzel, and Flavio Alonso from the Department of Comparative Medicine at Stanford will be collaborators on this project.
Launch of Fellowship Program
As part of our launch, postdoc Anna Ratuski became our first official Laboratory Animal Welfare Research Fellow.
Dr. Ratuski completed her PhD at the University of British Columbia and has worked on Refinement research related to euthanasia and environmental enrichment for rodents used in science.
Since joining us at Stanford, Anna has worked behind the scenes to get Beyond3Rs off the ground and will continue to maintain and grow the website as part of her role. She is currently working in the Garner lab on a variety of projects related to laboratory mouse welfare and the 3Rs as part of her fellowship. Stay tuned for project updates!