Develop your B.R.E.E.D.! (Breeding Rodents Efficiently & Effortlessly by Design)

Executive Summary

Researchers at the NIH are using hundreds of thousands of rodents (mice and rats) per year and an increasing portion of these animals are genetically modified models (lines). Because of the rarity and/or the high cost of such animals, most of these models are bred at the institutes using them. Such decentralized practices are very time consuming for the researchers.Apart from these usual decentralized breeding practices, NIDA (National Institute of Drug Abuse) has a efficient centralized breeding program where, a handful of trained breeder specialists is taking care of the breeding and maintenance of all the rodents lines for the whole institute. Based on that model, we propose to try to create a support resource to help other NIH institutes to implement their own centralized breeding programs.

Team Members

Francois Vautier (team lead), NIH

Milestones

August 2017: Project selected into the HHS Ignite Accelerator
September 2017: Time in Accelerator Began
December 2017: Time in Accelerator Ended