Automatic Watering System for the Cancer Center animal facility at New Jersey Medical School

PROJECT ABSTRACT Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (RU)-New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) requests funds to purchase and outfit an automatic watering delivery system (AWS) to serve the needs of the current as well as future expanding numbers of rodent cages in the Cancer Center (CC) building vivarium in Newark. The current

facility was built in 2004 with 2200 Individually ventilated cages (IVC) with city water provided through water bottles. NJMS has seen a big increase in biomedical research and with it the need for use of animals in the research. To accommodate the growing number of NIH funded investigators using animals, we have outfitted

the facility with high-density IVC caging, increasing the cage capacity of the facility to 6000 cages within the existing footprint. Currently, the water source for the animals is city water that is bottled and autoclaved prior to providing them to the animals. This task is very labor intensive and time consuming. Also, the increased

amount of water bottles increases the chances for repetitive motion injuries to our animal care staff due to the many tasks associated with providing the water bottles- removing caps, putting on the caps, carrying heavy baskets with the autoclaved water etc. An AWS that supplies chlorinated reverse osmosis (RO) water proposed

in this project will significantly reduce the labor costs (estimated 2 FTEs), improve worker safety, provide constant and consistent high quality water and increase the rigor and reproducibility of research. The animal care technician time savings will be redirected to more animal care needs. The labor cost savings will

result in less per diem costs for the investigators. The equipment requested fits existing facility dimensions and utilizes most of the existing physical infrastructure. To ensure equipment operation Rutgers University will pay for the annual maintenance contract for proper maintenance of the equipment.