ICPBR rodent facility provides SPF rat husbandry and veterinary care services for scientific research. It consists of cleaning, storage, changing, air shower, sterile storage and barrier housing rooms. The micro-isolation caging system, clean bench, temperature and humidity alarming systems are installed in the housing room, with light cycle of 12 hours. The cleaning room is equipped with a pulsating vacuum sterilizer, while the drinking water is provided by a reverse osmosis pure water system. Animal beddings, water, cages, enrichment, wrapped surgical instruments or other materials that come into contact with animals are sterilized by the autoclave. The bedding is corn cob and is changed in the clean bench. Environmental enrichments include teething blocks, paper tubes, and paper-type bedding.
Animal care is provided to all animals every day, including weekends and holidays. The veterinary can offer advice on use of drugs (e.g. antibiotics, anesthetics, tranquilizers, and analgesics) for specific research purposes, treatment of sick animals, determination of endpoint on animals in moribund state, preventive medicine and pain management.
SPF rats are housed in the microisolation caging system. The air is sent into the micro-barrier through HVAC (ventilation and purification system), and then to each ventilation cage system. The EVC shelves and 42 cages are in the micro-isolation caging system which can effectively protect the animals. Each EVC cage is independent and the air inside can only be discharged through the exhaust outlet, which avoids the problem of cross infection. It will not produce adverse factors such as vibration, noise, heat and other side effects on animal experiments. The noise of the equipment is less than 20 dB during operation.
WANG Ye
Facility Manager
Email: ye.wang@icpbr.ac.cn