LIFE SCIENCES

Expertise

The team is composed of a specialized research logistician, an animal welfare veterinarian, four animal health bio-technicians, and is headed by an academic veterinarian. They work as a team to provide optimal animal care and high standard veterinary services. The services include assistance during colony management, sanitary status assessment, behaviour evaluation, anaesthesia, medical imaging, surgery, biopsy, therapeutic interventions, embryo and sperm cryopreservation, haematology, biochemistry, necropsy and tissue collection.

Description

The Technology Platform of Life Sciences (PTSV) is dedicated to the housing and breeding of small animals (mice and rats) used for experimental research. The PTSV has a total area of 1180 m2 with two zones, conventional and specific pathogen free.

It offers quality services for the accommodation, production and care of small animals and provides technical support to researchers.

Standard operating procedures are in place to ensure quality of research and animal wellbeing.

Equipment

The conventional facility

The conventional facility has a capacity of 2020 cages for mice and 235 for rats. It is composed of 5 accommodation and procedure rooms with fully equipped laboratories, one unit for the use of nanoparticles, one room for the manipulation of toxics, one fully equipped surgical theatre, metabolic cages, and several storage rooms.

The SPF facility

It has a capacity of 1680 cages for mice, consisting of a quarantine unit with a lock and a transfer cabinet, 4 accommodation and procedure rooms, a chemical laboratory equipped with an airlock and a biosafety cabinet, a surgical theatre, an imaging section and storage rooms.

The shared facility

It is equipped with a washing cabin, a double-entry autoclave, a reverse osmosis water filtration system, a bottle filling system, a litter filling and emptying system, two refrigerated cabinets, and two euthanasia CO2 devices.

The access is fully restricted and 24 h surveillance is provided. All rooms can be sterilized by hydrogen peroxide vapour.