HIGHLIGHTS ALONG THE HISTORICAL RECORD OF THE FCEN, UBA INSTITUTIONAL ANIMAL CARE AND USE COMITEE (IACUC) AND 3 RS IMPLEMENTATION

DYZENCHAUZ FERNANDO; MACHADO MOUTINHO LIRANE; NAGUILA ZAIRA

Mar del Plata

Congreso; Encuentro anual de Sociedades Biocientíficas; 2019

AACyTAL

HIGHLIGHTS ALONG THE HISTORICAL RECORD OF THE FCEyN, UBA INSTITUTIONAL ANIMAL CARE AND USE COMITEE (IACUC) AND 3 Rs IMPLEMENTATIONDyzenchauz, F.1, Machado Moutinho, L.2, Naguila Z.31Instituto de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental y Aplicada (IBBEA) CONICET-UBA.2Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias (IFIBYNE) CONICET-UBA.3Bioterio Central FCEN-UBA.There is a growing social awareness on issues related to the protection of animal welfare. In the year 2011 was founded the FCEN/IACUC whose mission is to adopt principles, policies, programs, and regulations aimed at ensuring the ethical use of research animals. To achieve this goal, we worked on two axes: 1) a required course for teachers, researchers, and students of the faculty involved in the use of animals, with a 5 years validity period, and 2) the evaluation of the experimental protocols dealing with animals. Our IACUC undertook the endeavor of the 3Rs implementation. We developed a form for submission of experimental protocols, with evaluation criteria based on the analysis of a wide array of considerations, such as objective and rationale of the project, technical and environmental aspects, experimental and surgical procedures, classification of severity of the procedure, justification for the use of animals with regards to alternative methods, experimental design, anaesthesia, analgesia, and humanitarian end point. Since its founding, 125 protocols were evaluated. It is noteworthy the diversity of the areas of knowledge of the analyzed protocols, while 5% of them include wild animals and 95%, laboratory animals. Disaggregating data by species, the mouse represents 70% of the animals used, rats (11%), fish (9%), frogs (8%), and birds (5%). Strikingly, nearly a third of the protocols submitted for evaluation, have not continued in the evaluation process due to the neglect of those who submitted them. Additionally, there is an evident bias in the gender of animals used, since more than 70% of the protocols submitted by the scientific community of the FCEN-UBA, similarly to the international scientific community, use only males as experimental subjects. Finally, in order to monitor the compliance with the welfare assurance of the animals used in research, the IACUC has implemented an overview of the protocols wherever the experiments are carried out.