Modernization of the Clinical and Translational Research Vivarium Environmental Monitoring System

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The University of Louisville (UofL) is an Institution of Emerging Excellence (IEE) and one of 23 states designated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) state, serving the research needs of medically underserved communities. As part of the IDeA state program, UofL is the recipient of four NIH funded Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) projects to target local and regional health crises in Kentucky and Appalachia. These include centers in 1) Center for Cardiometabolic Science, 2) Microbiomics and Inflammation, 3) Hepatobiology and Toxicology, and 4) Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy. UofL is requesting $345,933 for an Avidity Watchdog EX Environmental Monitoring and Light Control System for the Clinical and Translational Research Building vivarium (CTRV). The CTRV houses animals for 3 of the 4 UofL COBRE projects’, including the state’s only Germ-Free/Gnotobiotic Mouse Facility, the university’s rodent imaging core, and animals utilized by 64 investigators in 16 departments. The CTR vivarium is the largest vivarium on campus with capacity of >12,000 mouse cages. The new environmental monitoring system will allow for enhanced monitoring of the vivarium utilized for a diverse range of research subjects and species including mice, rats, hamsters, and zebrafish. The innovation of the Avidity Environmental Monitoring and Light Control System will allow real-time monitoring and will issue remote alarms for all vivarium housing rooms to several veterinary and facility staff allowing for timely management environmental problems, which will advance operations, minimize research disruption and strengthen the integrity of the research by reducing variables. The current Siemens monitoring system is unreliable and has the limitation of only notifying one critical alarm at a time. In addition, the Avidity system can be connected to the Avidity automated watering system and detect leaks to the cage rack level with remote alarms to alert veterinary and facility staff of leaks in the watering system, preventing adverse flooding of animal cages. Our current system (Siemens) cannot detect water leaks and to our knowledge, the Avidity system is the only system capable of doing so. We installed the Avidity environmental monitoring system (including Avidity autowatering) in our newest vivarium and our long-term objective is to install this monitoring system and Avidity autowatering in all our vivaria (including CTRV) in the future to assure enhanced animal welfare and reduce environmental variability of research data. A broad, diverse range of investigators and their research efforts in both biomedical and basic sciences will benefit from this equipment in this shared-use facility.