Surgically modified animal models play a critical role in biomedical research, allowing researchers to mimic the structural and functional properties of human conditions. However, it is only with highly consistent, standardized models that researchers can be confident their results are reliable and repeatable. Yet, maintaining the technical skills necessary to complete precise surgical procedures is costly and time consuming for individual research laboratories. As a result, time-poor research teams are increasingly recognizing the value that contract research services can add.
Inotiv’s Global Head of Surgery, Brad Gien, discusses some benefits of outsourcing surgical services:
Consistency is key
Researchers strive to reduce variability in their methodological procedures, so outcomes can only be explained by their experimental conditions and manipulations. Unfortunately, surgery can produce particularly variable results if surgeons are not thoroughly trained and maintain their skills. Achieving the same result every time requires expertise to be maintained over long time periods and across research laboratories. As Brad explained:
“It's not like riding a bike. Surgery is a skill that you have to keep practicing. Our surgeons – some of who have been with us for more than 20 years – do as many as 10,000 surgeries a year. Where surgery is concerned, practice really does make perfect.“
When surgery is performed by exceptionally practiced surgeons at one of Inotiv’s surgical sites in Europe and North America, researchers can safely assume their outcomes are not affected by variability in the health of their surgical models.
The three Rs
Animal welfare is at the heart of all preclinical research. When surgical skills are being refined, there tends to be an unavoidable loss of animals in the early phases of the research. This can occur either because the research team has not performed a particular surgery before, or because they haven’t performed it in a long time. Brad explained how working with surgical services helps researchers adhere to the three Rs:
“The researchers we work with want to ensure their models are high quality and in good health. That’s because when surgery is less than perfect, a lot more animals are needed: you may end up with inconclusive results, meaning you then need to repeat the study. Added to this, unhealthy animals with surgery-induced infection dramatically alter toxicology and pharmacokinetic profiles of drugs.”
Alternatively, procedures performed by Inotiv’s surgeons are done well the first time, pain is minimized, and the animals are delivered without surgery-induced complications. As a result, research teams are meeting their commitment to the three Rs.
The beauty is in the details
Inotiv’s specialized surgical teams benefit from knowledgeable veterinarians and technicians and continually upgraded surgical tools. They are focused entirely on the surgery itself, meaning they are in a position to develop innovative protocols that produce state-of-the-art surgical models. Brad described Inotiv's success with one of their procedures, the myocardial infarction model.
“Previously, this surgery produced highly variable results. That’s because the artery you need to tie off is extremely small, and if that ligature is moved from the exact spot it needs to be could make the difference between the animal being unaffected by the procedure or too injured. We went through every detail of the surgery in depth. We took high-resolution images of the heart, identified every landmark, and pinpointed some key regions that could be reliably targeted with practice. Our variability for this procedure is now below 5%, which is why we’re considered the leaders in this model for the US market.”
Brad had further examples of how their attention to detail leads to consistently high-quality models, such as monitoring rodents through the use of RFID microchips. He also discussed how their expertise allows them to be flexible, so that researchers can work with Inotiv’s teams to create the model their research question needs. As Brad puts it:
“As a surgery department, that's all we do. We're not trying to be a jack-of-all-trades. We're a master of one.”
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