Applications

Attending the FELASA 2025 Congress will be an invaluable opportunity for my professional growth. As a veterinarian and young researcher, I will gain access to the latest advancements in laboratory animal science, welfare, and refinement techniques. This knowledge will directly enhance my work, improving research quality and ensuring high animal welfare standards in my institution. Additionally, the congress will provide a unique chance to engage with leading experts, exchange experiences, and establish collaborations that can lead to future training opportunities and research partnerships. Presenting my PhD research on strategies to cope with compassion fatigue will also allow me to receive valuable feedback and contribute to discussions on the well-being of laboratory animal professionals. By applying what I learn and sharing it through training sessions, lectures, and publications, I will ensure that this experience has a lasting impact, benefiting my institution, students, and the broader scientific community.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) allows the evaluation of brain injuries at different time points. This study aimed to apply the gadolinium-enhanced MRI to detect blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction at the initial stages in stroke-prone renovascular hypertensive rats (RHRSP). Hypertension was induced in 12 male Sprague–Dawley rats using the method of two-kidney, two-clip. An MRI T2 map was performed weekly and a T1-weighted gadolinium-enhanced MRI before and every two weeks after hypertensive induction. Systolic blood pressure was significantly higher in RHRSP from the first week. 3 of the 6 RHRSP rats showed cerebral ischemic lesions and only one of them showed cerebral hemorrhage. T1 maps showed an increase in BBB leakage measured by gadolinium extravasation into the whole brain of RHRSP rats at 4, 10, and 16 weeks. In conclusion, this study shows that gadolinium-enhanced MRI can detect BBB leakage throughout the establishment of the hypertensive state in RHRSP rats.

Health monitoring (HM) of laboratory rodents is essential for quality assurance in animal facilities. Besides pathogens, opportunists and individual study confounders, there is profound evidence, that also commensals and the microbiota composition influences research data. Consequently, microbiome characterization should be included in HM strategies to increase the scientific validity of projects. However, these analyses are, until now, not part of routine programs. Therefore, the aim of this project is to establish an innovative HM methodology, which involves the metagenome analyses of the exhaust air dust (EAD) of individually ventilated cage systems. To this purpose, 23 EAD-filters were analyzed by quantitative Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (qPCR) and Next-Generation-Sequencing (NGS) and the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity were calculated. Filters spiked with defined bacterial suspensions as well as EAD field samples from existing colonies were used as positive and negative controls. Furthermore, a full microbiome profiling was performed comparing EAD-filters and feces as a sample matrix. Test accuracy of NGS was comparable to the qPCR used as a gold standard. While most agents were successfully detected based on the relative number of read counts, precise diagnostics of Staphylococcus aureus and Klebsiella oxytoca required using specific genome coverage ratios as thresholds to increase the diagnostic specificity. As expected, microbiome analyses of EAD-filters and feces show distinct alpha-diversity of bacterial communities, whereas both sample matrices were suitable to detect differences in beta-diversity between separate units. Altogether, the establishment of this innovative HM approach contributes to the 6R concept, which addresses besides animal welfare also the scientific validity of research.