Group-housing in SP studies

Keeping laboratory animals in group housing is important for the animal welfare and it is mandated by law in many countries. Rodents are one of the social animals mostly used in pharmacology studies. Telemetry implants with tracking functionality could help to track the rodents in group housing experiment designs. In safety pharmacology studies, cardiovascular data of laboratory animals is typically acquired by wireless implantable telemetry devices. This technique enables the animals to freely move without external disturbances during experiments. Adding animal tracking to the telemetry system, enables us to better monitor the animals during cardiovascular safety pharmacological studies.

Video can help to track non-rodents and therefore support the analysis of the cardiovascular data. Any significant fluctuation in the ECG signals and Cardiovascular data, can be correlated to movement artefacts by video analysis. However, video tracking in rodents in a group house arena is more challenging. They are small and quickly in movement and changing posture.

In my PhD project, I will work on tracking micro chip-set to assist video tracking during cardiovascular telemetry data capturing in our laboratories. I will investigate the variability of cardiovascular and behavioural data to improve animal welfare in the context of in vivo safety pharmacological evaluations which will be used to analyse and quantify the outputs.

References:

1. Prior, H., & Holbrook, M. (2021). Strategies to encourage the adoption of social housing during cardiovascular telemetry recordings in non-rodents. Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods, 108, 106959. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vascn.2021.106959
2. Weber, E. M., Dallaire, J. A., Gaskill, B. N., Pritchett-Corning, K. R., & Garner, J. P. (2017). Aggression in group-housed laboratory mice: why can’t we solve the problem? Lab Animal, 46(4), 157–161. https://doi.org/10.1038/laban.1219
3. Markert, M., Trautmann, T., Krause, F., Cioaga, M., Mouriot, S., Wetzel, M., & Guth, B. D. (2018). A new telemetry-based system for assessing cardiovascular function in group-housed large animals. Taking the 3Rs to a new level with the evaluation of remote measurement via cloud data transmission. Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods, 93, 90–97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vascn.2018.03.006
4. Home. (n.d.). Retrieved February 03, 2021, from https://www.tse-systems.com/
5. Peleh, T., Bai, X., Kas, M. J., & Hengerer, B. (2019). RFID-supported video tracking for automated analysis of social behaviour in groups of mice. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 325, 108323. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2019.108323