Animal Care & Use Update
Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee
Office of Animal Welfare
Volume 1, Issue 1
August 2020
Welcome Dr. Cotroneo
The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) and the Office of Animal Welfare (OAW) welcome Dr. Tara Cotroneo to West Virginia University. Dr. Cotroneo will serve as the new Attending Veterinarian at WVU, as of July 1, 2020. She joins WVU from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, where she recently served as Clinical Veterinarian. In addition to her veterinary responsibilities for all animals housed on the numerous WVU campuses, Dr. Cotroneo will share responsibilities with the IACUC for all regulatory compliance with federal laws and policies governing humane use of animals for research, teaching and maintenance. She will also direct the Office of Laboratory Animal Resources (OLAR), and will serve on the IACUC. Please join us in welcoming Dr. Cotroneo to the Mountaineer family! If you have questions or issues related to animal research, you can contact her at OLARvetstaff@hsc.wvu.edu or 304-293-2721.
Environmental Enrichment
The IACUC, OAW and OLAR (Office of Laboratory Animal Resources) strive to provide the best possible care for the animals at WVU. Animals make better research models when their welfare is a priority. One part of this is creating a cage or pen environment that helps to meet their natural social and behavioral needs. Guidance on these topics is provided by the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) and in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. More about WVU’s guidelines on enrichment, as well as other topics, can be found here:
animal.research.wvu.edu/policies-and-guidelines#wvu
As a standard practice, rodents at WVU receive nesting “pucks” made of shredded paper, lightly compressed into a puck shape, after each cage change. This enables easy handling and consistent distribution. For the animals, it presents an opportunity to manipulate their environment and fulfill a natural nesting behavior. Enrichment can also have a significant impact on the reduction of aggression between cage mates. Single housed rodents are generally provided an additional enrichment item since they do not have the opportunity to socialize. Larger animals such as birds, rabbits and sheep also benefit from enrichment. For these larger species, OLAR relies on social housing, physical enrichment such as toys, and sometimes food enrichment.There are times when the use of enrichment is contraindicative to research efforts. In these situations, it is incumbent upon the investigator to get IACUC approval. The request and justification to withhold enrichment may be included in the protocol or as an amendment to the protocol. If approved, the investigator then needs to submit a Special Care Form to OLAR, for those animals that are housed in OLAR vivaria. The form can be found here:
hsc.wvu.edu/olar/forms/. The Special Care Form is OLAR’s tool for documenting and communicating changes to standard husbandry practices. Questions regarding this process should be directed to OAW and/or OLAR.
Working through the pandemic
In case you missed it – While most research efforts were put on hold in response to COVID-19,
agriculture doesn’t stop in the face of a pandemic. Read more about the
response by Davis College employees
here. They have continued to care for the
agriculture animals at various WVU farm locations since March.
Updated IACUC Policies, Guidelines, SOPs
Below is a list of recently updated policies and guidelines. You
can find them on the OAW website "Policies and Guidelines" page.
- Acclimation of Newly Acquired Animals
- Breeding and Weaning of Mice and Rats
- Toe Clipping for Animal Identification
Post-Approval Monitoring
The IACUC has resumed Post-Approval Monitoring (PAM)
activities. PAM admins will be reaching out to laboratories that are returning
to on-campus research. The initial steps for the PAM process will most likely
be remote in nature.
