The Fox Lab at UNMC optimizes animal and rat tracking with eLabJournal

Working with eLab has been a great experience. They are so easy to work with and help anytime we have a question.

Benjamin Lamberty, Researcher at UNMC

Download PDF

Fox Lab

The University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) was founded in 1869 and became the state’s first medical college in 1881 and part of the University of Nebraska in 1902. Today, the UNMC educational programs train more health professionals than any other institution in the state. The Fox Lab began at the UNMC approximately 15 years ago in the Neurological Sciences Department. The team of 12 focuses on the mitochondrial function of different neurological cells and brain pathways. More recently, they have begun looking at single-cell analyses of brain cells.

Goal

Currently: To publish at least four more papers, many of which use the Parkinson Rat model.

In the long term: Utilize the published papers to help Dr Howard S. Fox and Dr Kelly Stauch secure funding in order to continue their work on the ways to prevent, treat, and/or cure Parkinson’s Disease.

Challenge

A more efficient and centralized rat-tracking system

To implement a more efficient and centralized rat tracking system compatible with existing label printers. The Fox Lab has several rat strains associated with several experiments in inventory. To optimize workflows, the Fox Lab requires a platform that seamlessly links the colony to experiments so that the team may keep track of important factors, such as how many animals are in inventory, which experiments they will be used in, whether they were transferred to the correct experiment, and more.

Mainly, the Fox Lab wanted to move away from its digital and paper hybrid approach, which made daily tasks overcomplicated, having to shuffle through countless Excel sheets.

Solution

A centralized platform

With extensive sample and inventory management options on a centralized platform that provides seamless linking of animals to experiments, eLabJournal makes tracking animals more efficient for the Fox Lab. The eLabNext open ecosystem enables limitless third-party integrations, including label printers. Lastly, the eLabNext Mobile App makes it easy to pull data when away from the computer.

With eLabJournal, the Fox Lab can easily keep track of additional factors, such as:

• Breeding pairs and how many litters the females have had
• How many animals have been used for a particular experiment
• Genotype and ear punch identification for linking the gel picture to the litter
• Samples generated from experiments

For the Parkinson’s model, several females passed away during labor. With eLabJournal, the team could keep track and find out how many were dying compared to how many pairs were set. These findings are now in a paper recently submitted by the team. 

Result

An optimized experiment management process

eLabJournal offers a more efficient and centralized rat tracking system compatible with the existing label printers. As a result, the Fox Lab may move away from the paper, digital hybrid approach for a more optimized experiment management process.