3D-printed Wash Station with Integrated Anesthesia Delivery Manifold for High-throughput Depilation of Laboratory Mice.

Depilation (that is, hair removal) is a necessary prerequisite for many small animal surgeries and optical imaging experiments. Over-the-counter depilatory creams are widely used, owing to their efficacy, safety, and low rates of skin irritation and infection. However, the use of these creams is generally messy and time-consuming and generates considerable waste. Furthermore, the process itself varies markedly among laboratories. Here we present a 3D-printed device that simplifies the depilation procedure by integrating 3 key elements: 1) a multiple-port, self-scavenging anesthesia manifold, 2) curved animal holders with flow-through slats, and 3) a removable waste collection tray. Reflecting insights gained from an international survey about depilatory lab procedures that highlighted the lack of standardized protocols, this apparatus is designed to improve the neatness, throughput, and safety of mouse depilation, resulting in efficient and repeatable processes that bolster the welfare of both researchers and subjects.

A novel method for intratracheal injection of infectious agents into mice.

Intratracheal injection is a traditional technique used in small animal studies of highly contagious airborne pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis. However, current techniques of intratracheal injection generally involve procedures that pose a risk of incident injury and infection for researchers, and may also cause collateral damage to experimental animals during the installation process. Here we describe an intratracheal injection method that was enabled by a three dimensional printing of a custom platform. This updated technique improved the overall ergonomics of intratracheal injection in mice, minimizing the risk of human injury and implementing the 3R (replacement, reduction and refinement) principle in mouse infection studies.

Non-invasive imaging and analysis of cerebral ischemia in living rats using positron emission tomography with 18F-FDG.

Stroke is the third leading cause of death among Americans 65 years of age or older(1). The quality of life for patients who suffer from a stroke fails to return to normal in a large majority of patients(2), which is mainly due to current lack of clinical treatment for acute stroke. This necessitates understanding the physiological effects of cerebral ischemia on brain tissue over time and is a major area of active research. Towards this end, experimental progress has been made using rats as a preclinical model for stroke, particularly, using non-invasive methods such as (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) coupled with Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging(3,10,17). Here we present a strategy for inducing cerebral ischemia in rats by middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) that mimics focal cerebral ischemia in humans, and imaging its effects over 24 hr using FDG-PET coupled with X-ray computed tomography (CT) with an Albira PET-CT instrument. A VOI template atlas was subsequently fused to the cerebral rat data to enable a unbiased analysis of the brain and its sub-regions(4). In addition, a method for 3D visualization of the FDG-PET-CT time course is presented. In summary, we present a detailed protocol for initiating, quantifying, and visualizing an induced ischemic stroke event in a living Sprague-Dawley rat in three dimensions using FDG-PET.