The Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing is an academic center affiliated with the Division of Toxicological Sciences in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Text Size:
2008 Animal Welfare Enhancement Awards
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
2008 Call for Proposals PDF Poster Download
Attention lab technicians, animal technicians, and all who work with laboratory animals: The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) now is accepting proposals for the 2008 Animal Welfare Enhancement Awards.
The focus of these awards is to refine the housing, handling and/or experimental situations for laboratory animals. Studies may, for example, examine:
- how physiological and behavioral stress responses to common husbandry (e.g., capture) and traditional treatment procedures (e.g., gavage, injection, blood collection) can be reduced or eliminated (e.g., by training the subjects to cooperate rather than resist);
- whether animals caged at different tier levels show different physiological and behavioral stress responses when being approached by personnel, and how these responses can be minimized or avoided;
- whether the presence of a compatible companion buffers physiological and behavioral stress responses to experimental situations (e.g., enforced restraint);
- whether animals kept in legally minimum-sized cages benefit from a moderate increase in space that is (a) empty versus (b) structured in species-appropriate ways (e.g., shelter, visual blind, perch, platform, PVC tube).
Any studies to be undertaken must be non-invasive, with the possible exception of obtaining blood for biochemical measurements (animals that have been trained to cooperate during venipuncture should be used, if possible). Objective measures might include behavior, coat appearance, body weight, analysis of feces, urine, or blood as described above.
Each award will be for $6,000. Funding is provided by the Bernice Barbour Foundation and CAAT.
These awards are intended for laboratory and animal technicians; senior investigators can sponsor them, however. They are limited to North American applicants only.
The proposal itself should be in the form of a letter clearly stating the objectives of the study and the anticipated outcomes. It should provide sufficient detail so that reviewers can understand what is being proposed, how it will be achieved, and how the data will be evaluated. Please be sure to include the title of the proposed study, as well as the name, position, and institution of the investigator/technician(s).
Each proposal must be approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee, and the proposal itself must be co-signed by the Head of Animal Services at the Institution. Applications should be sent via e-mail to rbrady@jhsph.edu. Any parts of the application that cannot be sent by e-mail should be sent in multiples of 10 copies each to:
Alan M. Goldberg, Ph.D.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing
111 Market Place, Suite 840
Baltimore, MD 21202-6709
The deadline for submission is June 1, 2008. Applications will be reviewed by an international group of reviewers. CAAT then will make the final decisions on those proposals to be funded. Successful applicants will be funded by August 1, 2008. Acceptance of this award implies that funds for this specific research are not currently available from other sources.
Each successful applicant must send a final report of the completed study to rbrady@jhsph.edu (Ruth Brady) by August 1, 2009. These reports will be posted on the CAAT web site (http://caat.jhsph.edu) and will be announced on Altweb (http://altweb.jhsph.edu) and elsewhere, as appropriate. It is hoped that successful applicants also will submit a manuscript of their project and its outcome to a professional journal.
For information about previous Animal Welfare Enhancement Award studies, please see this page