Veterinary Services

Director:  Jefferson H. Carraway, DVM, MS, DACLAM

The Division of Veterinary Services (DVS) provides professional and technical support for all animal-related research projects at NCTR. The Division administers the Center’s Animal Care and Use Program, which is accredited by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care, International (AAALAC). Included within the Division are contracted services for animal husbandry, veterinary care, diet preparation, and pathology. This workforce is stable, highly trained and skilled, and boasts a high percentage of certified employees in their respective disciplines.

The Division Director is a member of NCTR’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), serving as Vice-Chair and Attending Veterinarian. The liaison between DVS and the IACUC ensures maximum efficiency in protocol planning and review, provision of the highest quality of animal care and use, and delivery of superior services to the NCTR research community.

DVS oversees the operation of five animal facilities consisting of over 112,000 square feet of space dedicated to providing state-of-the-art housing and care of research animals. A variety of housing options are available for rodent models including ventilated rack systems and automatic watering systems. A rodent-breeding operation established over thirty years ago provides many of the strains used for on-site experiments. A highly trained and American Association for Laboratory Animal Science (AALAS)-certified animal care staff provides a wide variety of husbandry and technical services in support of NCTR’s AAALAC-accredited Animal Care and Use Program.

Provision of veterinary services of the highest quality to NCTR’s research animals is a Division priority. Three veterinarians, two of whom are certified by the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine (ACLAM) and all of whom hold research degrees in addition to DVMs, are charged with ensuring that healthy animals are available for research projects, providing veterinary care as needed, training research staff, and participating in projects requiring veterinary expertise. These veterinarians share emergency-call duty during non-business hours to ensure prompt attention to any animal in need of medical attention.

The Diet Preparation Facility is a well-equipped, large-scale formulation services unit. All animal diets received at NCTR are processed through the Diet Preparation Facility. The majority of dosed diets, dosed water, gavage solutions, and creams used in experiments performed at the Center are prepared in this facility. Dosed-feed production capability is 200,000 kg per year. Diets can be mixed with test articles in solution or solid state in concentrations as low as 0.1 parts-per-billion. In addition, test articles can be mixed in the animals’ drinking water to exacting standards in concentrations as low as one microgram per milliliter.

The Pathology Services group provides support including necropsy and routine histopathology, as well as molecular pathology, immunohistochemistry, clinical pathology, and other nonroutine services such as digital macrophotography, laser capture microdissection, and image archiving using digital storage of microscopic images at diagnostic resolution. The staff includes a professional team of pathologists and specialists in molecular and toxicologic pathology, a medical technologist, and American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP)-certified technical support staff.

Ongoing Research Projects 

• Clostridium Botulinum Toxin Bioassay - Determination of Human Health Hazard in Regulatory Food Samples (E0725901)
• Evaluating the Effects of Over-the-Counter Skin Products, such as Sunscreen, on the Absorption of Dermally Applied Estradiol, in an In Vitro and an In Vivo Model (E0730401)
• Paralytic Shellfish Toxin Bioassay - Determination of Human Health Hazard (E0725801)

The NCTR Annual Plans contains information on the latest accomplishments and plans for the Division of Veterinary Services as well as project and publication listings.