The objective of the Preclinical Models Core (PMC) of the Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (KIDDRC) is to provide integrated core facilities and services that optimally facilitate creation and analysis of cellular and organismal models of IDD. To accomplish this, the PMC will consolidate and integrate new and established core technologies and services. This involves extending KIDDRC?s existing capabilities in analyzing behavior, anatomy, physiology and gene expression, to now include mutant mice production (established but not directly affiliated with KIDDRC), and establishing new facilities that provide cutting-edge genome editing technologies to aid in generating cellular models using patient?derived cells. The PMC builds on the long-standing KIDDRC tradition of providing outstanding core support to its members. The PMC represents a reconfiguration of key elements of services, and features Rodent Behavioral Facilities (RBF), which provide behavioral testing for sensory and motor function, cognitive and social behaviors, memory and learning, and somatic and visceral pain, and services built around microscopy and image analysis, genomics, and data management support. The PMC also reflects a major new direction by including resources and technologies for model creation: The Transgenic and Gene Targeting Facility (TGF), will cover a broad range of mouse and pluripotent stem cell transgenesis and mutagenesis methods. These new technologies will now have prominent roles in providing the PMC with extensive capabilities for generating cellular and organismal models of IDD. This core builds on a solid history of providing effective, highly valued resources and services to KIDDRC programs. The current application advances prior capabilities by incorporating important new services in model creation and phenotyping. A novel feature is the complete integration of services to provide a continuous pipeline of core technologies beginning with cellular and rodent modeling and extending through behavioral assays, metabolic and biomarker phenotyping, cellular and subcellular analysis, and transcriptional analysis, with ancillary analysis as appropriate. We believe that this approach will yield well characterized cell and rodent models to facilitate our understanding of IDD and to guide us in the development of new therapeutic modalities.
The Preclinical Models Core of the Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center is designed to assist investigators who seek to advance the ability to diagnose, manage and treat IDD by providing a mechanistic understanding that, due to logistical and ethical constraints, can only be obtained from non-human studies.
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