Missions
The Animal Facility, part of the Preclinical Neuroscience Platform (PNP), provides state-of-the-art infrastructure and a highly qualified team dedicated to maximize animal welfare while ensuring the smooth execution of scientific experiments.
The facility combines animal housing and breeding areas, maintained under strict hygiene standards and dedicated experimental areas designed for conducting research.
Services
Animal housing
- The animal facility houses rodents in different sanitary standards.
- Sanitary status are regularly monitored to ensure the animals’ well-being, limit experimental variations due to environmental factors and enhance the reproducibility and reliability of the results.
Husbandry
- The animal facility team ensures the production and maintenance of genetically modified rodent lines in accordance to experimental requirements.
- The team also ensures an appropriate environment, including optimal parameters and care to enhance husbandry and animal welfare.
Ethics
- The PNP team involves devoted animal welfare specialists such as animal caretakers, veterinarian and animal experimentation experts including the Animal Welfare Officer and the Director of Animal Experimentation.
- The team ensures that welfare and proper care are maintained in full compliance to Swiss laws.
Experimental areas
- Experimental areas, dedicated to neuroscience research, are available to researchers.
- Suitable space and various shared equipment for the surgery and experimental testings are provided
- A BSL2 zone is available for studies involving the use of viruses classified as such.
Animal Research
Key projects
Since its inception, several projects hosted on the platform have led to significant breakthroughs in Neuroscience. The proximity of other platforms at the Campus Biotech fosters synergies within the neuroscientific community.
These key projects and the use of animal models have contributed to major advancements in both Fundamental and Translational Neuroscience Research, showing the essential role of animals in advancing scientific knowledge.
Access Request
An access request is required to get initial safety guidelines and technical trainings. Only trained users can get the access.
- New users: access is granted upon request after completing the required trainings.
- Users may host visitors with prior approval from the Head of the Animal Facility. Users are responsible for ensuring that visitors respect the guidelines.
- For more information, please contact us at pnp@fcbg.ch.
Please refer to the “Resources » tab to find the schedule for the next PNP introduction.
Working in the facility
Management of animals
PyRAT, Python based Relational Animal Tracking by Scionics, is an online software designed for the management of animal colonies:
- Tracking of the numbers of animals per strain and the associated cage counts.
- Easy monitoring and traceability of general activities: health statuts, current matings, upcoming weanings…
- Efficient system for ordering animals and submitting requests.
- Visualization of experimental licenses and assistance in compiling mandatory legal reports.
Booking equipment
An online booking system is available to book main equipment or space capacities. It is important to keep the reservations up-to-date for availability and invoicing purposes.
After getting the access, new users can register as new local user on:
Material transfer
Material or equipment can get into the confined zone after following a cleaning and disinfection process.
These steps are important to maintain the health of the animals and the sanitary status of the area.
Pharmacy procedures
The Animal Facility offers a range of medications to guarantee the well-being of the laboratory animals. These drugs are classified into two categories according to the federal law of narcotics and psychotropic substances (LStup).
Requests should be sent on Mondays or Wednesdays to be validated by the on-site veterinarian.
Every form must be signed beforehand to validate the order.
In order to protect public safety and dangers arising from the disposition and consumption of narcotics and psychotropic substances, medications are subject to strict monitoring regulation.
Animal transfer
Import from accredited Animal Facilities
Ordering from known commercial suppliers and registered animal lines
Animal orders can be submitted by users via PyRAT.
Weekly orders are centralized by the animal facility according to the following plan:
Ordering from other suppliers and/or not registered animal lines
For other suppliers such as JAX, Taconic or Envigo or for an animal lines not registered on PyRAT, please contact the support team to create and add the desired lines as well as giving the required supplier’s contact and information for importation.
Animal import
All submitted orders needs to be validated by the support team. Details of the GM data sheet for transgenic lines and the health monitoring of the exporting facility (health monitoring summary for the last 18 months) are mandatory to organize the transport and the housing.
Animals are housed according to the health status and the needs.
If the health status does not match to the requirements, other solutions may be discussed. A quarantine period may be needed in such a case to verify the health status and prevent the spread of undesired pathogens.
Acclimation phase
An acclimation phase of 5 days is mandatory for all animals imported or transferred between the facilities.
A proper acclimation period allows animals to recover from the stress of the transport and adapt to their new environment.
Export
Animal export
Animal exports are centralized by the animal facility.
A request must be submitted to the support team as well as on PyRAT to provide the required information and documents for the importing animal facility and for the transport.
Animal care
Animal Care and Veterinary Support
Animals are monitored every day by the animal caretakers to ensure their well-being and health status.
With the aim of keeping an appropriate level of animal welfare, the Animal Facility Team is in close contact with researchers.
An agreement and procedures define responsibilities towards the animals.
Traceability of reported events, problems with animals is followed through PyRAT. In case of urgent matters, the animal facility directly communicate with researchers to ensure prompt reaction and maximize the welfare. Our veterinarian is available for advice to adapt treatments and thus, ensure a quick recovery of the animals.
Health Status and Hygiene Standards
Health monitoring are assessed every 3 months including adapted microbiologic and parasitological tests based on the health conditions of the housing rooms and following the FELASA guidelines.
The animal facilities exclude a long list of rodent pathogens and parasites, known to induce adverse effects on animal health, cause disease and/or interfere with research. The SPF breeding also excludes opportunistic agents, which are not pathogenic in rodents but can cause local or systemic infections in animals whose health is compromised.
Ethics and legal requirement
Ethics
The PNP is deeply committed to ensuring humane and responsible animal care while maintaining compliance to the Swiss laws. The animal facility team supports researchers to combine animal studies with animal welfare and ethics compliance, ensuring that animal dignity is respected and scientific outcomes more reliable.
How can we help ?
The team contributes to research in:
- Assisting researchers to carefully design experiments
- Closely collaborating with researchers to carefully monitor animal welfare and health conditions
Requirements
The Swiss legislation regulating animal experimentation is among the strictest in the world. This legislative framework enforce the protection of animal welfare and dignity as well as the responsible and ethical use of animals in research.
Anyone planning to conduct research involving animals must comply with strict legal and ethical requirements according to the Swiss legislation:
- Passing specific trainings in animal welfare and experimental techniques ensuring a responsible, gentle and humane handling of laboratory animals. These specific trainings are supplemented by mandatory continuing education courses.
- Obtaining an authorization from the cantonal authorities justifying the scientific purpose of the suggested work, the experimental design and the weighing of interest between constraints on the animals and the expected gain in knowledge.
- Following the 3Rs principle – Replace, Reduce, Refine – to minimize the number of animals used and the stress caused by experiments by using appropriate methods to alleviate or decrease potential pain, suffering and distress.
