The Animal Care Core will provide animal care, animal housing and preparation of SCID mice and xenograft tumors for experimentation. The core activity is also responsible for coordinating the administration, regulatory reporting and fiscal management of animal care activities. Since SCID mice are immune suppressed and contain human tumors, specialized care is required. All animal procedures require sterile technique and handlers require specialized training. The Animal Care Core staff orders SCID mice, maintain the daily records on all of the tumors and animals, inject explanted human melanoma cells into recipient xenografts, monitor the growth of primary tumor xenografts in the F1 and F2 generations, transplant F2 tumors as required for treatment and prepare xenografts for -95 degrees Celsius storage. The Animal Core staff is responsible for preparation of all regulatory records for the Department of Animal Resources and the I.A.C.U.C. The routine daily maintenance, husbandry and facility hygiene for the animals are provided as a purchased service by the Department of Animal Resources. Animals are initially housed in isolation in the Central Animal Facility, tumors inoculated and transplanted in the Central Animal Facility under Biosafety Level 2 conditions and then transferred under sterile conditions to the laboratory animal facility for monitoring tumor growth for subsequent treatment in Projects 1, 2, 3 or 4. Dennis B. Leeper is the Core Director and Judith A. Daviau, Institute Veterinarian, is the Co-Director. Dr. Leeper will direct and oversee all operations. Dr. Daviau will have a critical role in monitoring all operations, reviewing all procedures, seeing to the health and care of all animals and helping improve and upgrade animal care and surgical procedures. Dr. Daviau's specialty is the care of laboratory animals. Both Dr. Daviau and Dr. Leeper have extensive experience supervising animal care, including colonies of SCID mice. Dr. Leeper is a member of the I.A.C.U.C. The Animal Care Core provides explanted melanoma cells from xenografts for Projects 1,2 and 3 and provides all the animals and tumors for Project 4 and the Subcontract with the University of Pennsylvania. The laboratory animal facility is A.A.A.L.A.C. approved.
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