Animals at university research labs still get care
Scores have been euthanized to conserve resources
As researchers wrapped up their experiments in March to comply with the state’s stay-at-home order, another problem dogged the University of Illinois at Chicago: How would it continue tending to the 40,000 lab animals housed on campus?
Veterinarians and maintenance staff were deemed essential workers to handle the cage cleaning, feeding and daily health checks required for animals used in federally sponsored research. They are given personal protective equipment and instructed to follow social distancing.
But other aspects of UIC’s response — including a recent memo that asked scientists to consider euthanizing older rodents — are likely to stir more controversy, especially from organizations that have long opposed the use of animals in research.
The March 19 memo to researchers said it was a “good time to critically look at colonies and cull aged breeders or nonproductive cages,” citing the need to “preserve critical resources.” Though projects that began before the shutdown were allowed to be completed, all others that weren’t deemed critical or related to COVID-19 were put on hold, and new animal orders were temporarily suspended.
“We feel that there’s a moral and ethical responsibility to make sure the animals are used appropriately and judiciously,” said Jeffrey Fortman, director of the UIC’s Biologic Resources Laboratory, where the animal researchers work. “Because we’ve asked principal investigators not to initiate new research projects, we don’t want them unnecessarily producing animals that cannot be used.”
Rodents at other major institutions are also being put down in droves. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and Johns Hopkins each have needed to cull hundreds of mice when laboratories abruptly shut down, according to media reports. Most commonly, rodents are euthanized with carbon dioxide or anesthetic gases.
Researchers characterize the jump in euthanization as a difficult but necessary step to prepare for a protracted pandemic. Universities have sought to limit the number of employees in the facilities, allowing them to work in staggered shifts. And lab operators want to maintain enough supplies for the animals — food, bedding, medication — in case there are long-term shortages. Administrators also fear a worst-case scenario in which workers fall ill and there aren’t enough staff for daily rounds. Still, the recent moves have only heightened tensions with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a historic foe to many in the scientific community. Referring to downsizing efforts as a “killing spree,” PETA launched a new campaign to voice its fierce objection to animal research as a whole.
As PETA learned of lab shutdowns, often from notices posted on university websites, the activist group wrote to schools — Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and Loyola University Chicago among them — urging them to stop using animals once and for all.
“PETA has been questioning why any of these animals are being bought, bred, trapped or experimented on in the first place since they are now so easily being disposed of and since experiments are now being ended or delayed,” Shalin Gala, PETA’s vice president for international laboratory methods, told the Tribune.
Researchers couldn’t disagree more. They counter that animal experiments help lead to live-saving advances in medicine and will be crucial as scientists race to discover treatments and vaccines for COVID-19. Already, a study spearheaded by Oxford University showed encouraging results that a potential vaccine injected into monkeys helped them develop antibodies to attack the virus.
‘We had to eliminate so many mice’
A researcher at U. of C. said she reduced her mouse population by more than half after the school began warning of a looming shutdown. By the end of March, the school had restricted lab access, and she began working from home.
The researcher, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from animals rights groups, said she had more than 400 cages of mice, with two to five per cage. She only had about a week to euthanize the animals. “Before the shutdown there was a decision, and I think this is consistent across all universities, that they wanted to lower the essential workforce that was required to go in ... and one essential workforce is the people who take care of our animals,” the researcher said.
The researcher and U. of C. officials were hesitant to share details of her work, such as how the mice are used. Others contacted by the Tribune also said they were reluctant to speak about their studies because of PETA, which has been using Twitter to single out scientists during the pandemic.
Some learned the hard way. The official PETA Twitter account started replying to researchers who lamented on social media about putting down mice with comments such as, “Sad to have killed a bunch of animals? What if you never did it again?” That’s caused some researchers to delete the original posts.
As part of its new letterwriting campaign, PETA also sent messages to more than 70 universities, demanding the schools shut down their animals labs, divulge how many animals have been euthanized — though there’s no indication that animals other than mice or rats have been affected.
Northwestern, which received a letter March 31, declined to comment. The letter also mentioned several animal care violations found by inspectors prior to the pandemic, including an incident in which more than 1,000 mice were given expired medication.
At Loyola, spokeswoman Anna Shymanski said the school follows federal guidelines for its work with animals and only uses them in cases when alternates aren’t available. In response to PETA’s May 5 letter, she said in an email: “Specially trained veterinarians and animal-care technicians provide for the care and well-being of the animals, and animal care committees regulate and monitor laboratories regularly,” she said in an email. “Our faculty understand that it is a privilege to use animals for the advancement of scientific discovery.”
A spokeswoman for U. of C., which received a letter April 15, said the school has also developed contingency plans “to ensure humane care and comfort of research animals during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Though U. of C. has launched dozens of new studies related to COVID-19, all labs working on other topics were closed.
The U. of C. researcher said she’s not sure when she’ll be able to return and worries about the impact of the delay on graduate students who work in her lab and were relying on results to finish their degrees.
She predicts further setbacks, because it will take time to breed the colonies again once everyone is allowed back. Graduate students typically spend about four years in the lab working to earn a doctorate, she said. “It is a big issue that we had to eliminate so many mice,” she said. “If we could go back to the lab full time this summer, we would still be another six months behind.”
Freezing mouse sperm
Even as researchers scramble to shrink their rodent colonies now, they also need to keep enough on hand in case studies resume on short notice.
Many are looking to cryopreservation — a process that involves freezing mouse sperm or embryos and storing them in liquid nitrogen — as a kind of insurance policy. Since lab mice are typically bred with particular genetic profiles that researchers isolate in their experiments, those unique DNA strains need to be protected.
The Jackson Laboratory, a nonprofit biomedical research institution based in Maine, has seen “a sudden spike in demand” for cryopreservation, said senior manager Robert Taft. As shelter-in-place orders took effect, the Jackson Laboratory dispatched trucks to Chicago and elsewhere to retrieve mice for cryopreservation. “We were getting these panicked calls from folks because they were uncertain what was going to happen,” Taft said.
‘Natural social distancing’ in UIC animal labs
Unlike schools that pulled the plug on all studies, UIC made an exception for research projects started before the state’s stay-athome order on March 21. Some other special projects, clinical trials and research related to COVID-19 were also permitted to move forward if they were considered essential, said Joanna Groden, vice chancellor for research.
At the sprawling Biologic Resources Laboratory, staffing levels have remained close to normal, Fortman said. Researchers approved to continue their projects use rotations to avoid contact with others and were required to wear face coverings.
“We have 137,000 square feet of space for housing animals, and it’s pretty easy to have your staff in different facilities, buildings and in different services areas, so there’s a lot of natural social distancing in how we operate,” Fortman said. One project allowed to continue was a 12-week study that started in January, testing a possible vaccine for a type of human papillomavirus on rabbits, Fortman said. Results from the study, funded by the National Cancer Institute, will be used in the coming years as the vaccine is considered for federal approval.