ANIMAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT In addition to the surgery and phenotyping cores, the NHLBI animal program provides veterinary care, research technical support and animal husbandry to rodents in NHLBI operated facilities and oversight of NHLBI animal activities in other NIH facilities. This includes logistical and financial management as well as regulatory compliance for all NHLBI animal activities. Dr. Hawkins, Dr. Springer and Ms. Joni Taylor also serve as members of the NHLBI Animal Care and Use Committee which is responsible for the research use and regulatory compliance of the animal research activities. Drs Hawkins and Springer and the program managers also assist investigators in the planning of research projects, preparation of animal protocols and implementation of the work. SURGERY CORE SCIENTIFIC IMPACT NHLBI Directors Awards, December 2015 Outstanding Translational Science Award for characterizing a role for DNA-dependent protein kinase in dendritic cell function and identifying a pharmacological inhibitor of DNA-PK as a novel treatment for asthma, Karen Keeran, Gayle Nugent and Ken Jeffries. Training within DIR ASR provides a formal 4 hour training class for all research staff who do animal surgery in NHLBI. We provide investigators with surgical training both within formal classes and in one-on-one settings. Over the past 12 months, we have formally trained 33 investigators and technical staff in basic surgical skills and aseptic technique in our investigator training course. Outside DIR Teaching & Mentoring For the last 16 years, Dr. Robert Hoyt (formerly NHLBI and now in NCI) has led and the ASR staff has served as instructors for multiple microsurgical workshop wet-labs (basic and advanced) at the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science (AALAS). The travel for this is sponsored and paid for by AALAS. This is one of their most popular and highly rated workshops. Instructors from ASR in 2015 were Clevenger, Jeffries, Keeran, Kozlov, Nugent and San. In 2015, Dr. Hoyt, Randy Clevenger, Joni Taylor and the ASR staff conducted day-long microsurgery workshops for staff at NIH. One session covered basic microsurgical techniques (9 students) and one advanced class of 8 students. The 8 students from outside of NHLBI were charged for the classes. We plan to continue this offering and see it as a valuable training opportunity for NIH. Karen Keeran, Art Zetts, Ken Jeffries and Randy Clevenger taught a workshop at the area NCAB-AALAS conference on suturing technique in 2015. ASR staff also taught an on-campus suturing workshop sponsored by NCAB in 2016. Dr. Hawkins with ASR staff support, provided a 2 week externship in June 2015 for Dr. Jennifer Beninson from the University of Michigan lab animal residency program. Our summer student for 2015 was Ms. Legend Thurman. An award from Dr. Gibbons for Take Your Child to Work Day was provided for: Allen, Clevenger, Jeffries, Keeran, Noguchi, Springer, Zetts
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