Health Monitoring Program

Mice intended for export are housed in a strictly controlled barrier facility, with access restricted to trained laboratory and animal care personnel via keycard access. Personal protective equipment (PPE)—including disposable gowns, shoe covers, gloves, hair bonnets, and masks—is required for entry. Dedicated animal care personnel are assigned to specific facilities or rooms to ensure strict adherence to facility protocols. Mice are housed in positive-pressure, individually ventilated cage (IVC) units that are changed every 1 to 2 weeks. Corncob bedding and paper nesting materials for enrichment are provided, along with irradiated feed. Prior to use, all caging, bedding, and enrichment materials are autoclaved to ensure sterility. An Edstrom automatic watering system supplies processed water (purified by reverse osmosis and chlorinated). Once mice leave the barrier facility, they cannot return.

Mice housed in the GemPharmatech facility are maintained under specific opportunistic pathogen-free (SOPF) or germ-free (GF) status. Their health status is meticulously monitored through a combination of sentinel mice, random colony sampling, and exhaust air dust (EAD) testing. Detailed monitoring procedures are outlined below:

• Sentinel Mice: Colony health is monitored quarterly using sentinel mice. Each sentinel cage houses two female mice aged 4 to 6 weeks. On a biweekly basis, these sentinels are exposed to soiled bedding pooled from multiple cages within their respective racks. Each rack unit contains 70 or 80 cages, with sentinel cages positioned on both sides of the rack (two mice per cage). Diagnostic results are reported as the ratio of positive samples to the total number of samples tested. The health screening protocol encompasses necropsy, as well as parasitological, bacteriological, and virological analyses.

• Random Colony Sampling: To proactively detect potential microbiological contamination, live mice, feces, or oral swabs are randomly sampled from immunodeficient strains and large breeding colonies (e.g., C57BL/6JGpt, BALB/cJGpt, and NCG).

• EAD Testing: Exhaust air dust is collected monthly and analyzed via PCR to detect airborne pathogens.

For imported mice, only specific pathogen-free (SPF) animals are accepted. Upon arrival, they must undergo quarantine, testing, and subsequent rederivation before they can be released into the barrier facility. These animals are initially housed in quarantine isolators, where diagnostic samples—including hair, feces, and serum—are collected and submitted to the GemPharmatech microbial testing center for analysis. Only after successfully passing all microbiological screenings can the line be rederived via cesarean section or embryo transfer and transferred to the breeding rooms.