(RESOURCE AND SERVICE SECTION) The overall goal of the UAB Center for Precision Animal Modeling (C-PAM) is to establish pipelines for preclinical scientific discovery, patient-driven disease modeling, and development of precision medicine-center clinical interventions. C-PAM is accomplishing this through a seven-phase pipeline from variant nomination to animal model characterization and preclinical treatment. The Resource and Service Section (RSS) supports C-PAM by working in several areas of the pipeline to support the Center's mission including Phases IV: Services and Shipment, V: Phenotyping, and VII: Special Services. Importantly, the RSS provides access to enhanced services in Phase VII that are difficult to accomplish in most individual labs and are not readily available through any other mechanism, or are prohibitively costly in terms of both expense and/or time impediments. The RSS provides a bridge between all other components in C-PAM and outside investigators. We are a checkpoint that helps ensure quality control, data management, and data input into our Bioinformatics database and C-PAM Variant Portal. We archive and distribute models created by the DMU to NIH-sponsored national repositories and/or outside investigators. We facilitate high level, detailed scientific dialogues between our team and both external and internal investigators and we provide animals for phenotype assessment in collaboration with the DMU and the Pre/Co-clinical Section. The goal of these conversations is to lead to new collaborations resulting in detailed secondary phenotyping through UAB Core Resource facilities that validates variant pathogenicity, provides new biological insights, and promotes targeted therapeutics testing of the animal models generated by the C-PAM pipeline. The overall aims of the UAB C-PAM RSS are:
Aim 1) Acquire and document mutant animal model strains and biomaterials from the Disease Modeling Unit. This will include rodents (mice and rats), zebrafish, and C. elegans.
Aim 2) Characterize, expand, and distribute resources created by the UAB C-PAM.
Aim 3) Provide access to unique C-PAM quality-controlled services developed by the Center on a fee-for-service basis. This will also include a component of outreach and will provide expert consultation services to help investigators design the most effective functional assays and therapeutic testing strategies.
