BRFAA - Biomedical Research Foundation Academy Of Athens
Biomedical Research Foundation Academy Of AthensAcademy Of Athens

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The Laboratory Animal Facility of the Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens (BRFAA) is an SPF facility with control access and a housing capacity for 25,000 transgenic mice, 1,000 rats, 40 rabbits and 10 swine.

The main tasks of the facility are: a. Breeding and housing of transgenic, immunodeficient, immunocompetent and conventional mice and rats; b. Pre- and Post- surgical veterinary care of the animals used in experiments; c. Improvement of housing conditions by studying and evaluating different caging environments; d. Technical advise and veterinary support to the scientists during the design of the experiments; e. Education and training of scientists and technical stuff on the proper care and use of laboratory animals

All animals are housed in accordance to the European legal framework and the International guidelines existing for the protection of animals used for scientific purposes. Mice and rats are housed in individual ventilated cages. A Building Managing System (BMS) monitors all the electromechanical equipment of the facility, 24 hours per day. The animal facility implements a complete veterinary medical care program, which includes preventive medicine, surveillance, diagnosis, treatment and control of diseases as well as veterinary care of the animals, used in experimental protocols.

The facility is also supporting behavioral studies for assessing the phenotype related to genetic manipulations, ageing phenomena or screening of novel pharmaceuticals. For this reason it is fully equipped for measurement of locomotor activity (open field with specialized video tracking software), motor coordination (beam, pole, and cylinder test; foot printing and grip strength), pain assessment (hot plate), social behavior (sociability chamber), anxiety-like (elevated plus maze, light-dark box, open field) and depressive-like behavior (forced swim test, sucrose preference), learning and memory (Morris water maze, 8-arm radial maze, active/passive avoidance, object recognition/location), attention and sensorimotor gating (acoustic startle, prepulse inhibition) in mice and rats.

The facility is also organized educational courses on the proper care and use of laboratory animals, in accordance to the new legal requirements.