About the MGH IACUC
MGH maintains and Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) as required by the Public Health Service (PHS) Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and the Animal Welfare Act (AWA).
Animals are maintained in accordance with the “Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals” (National Research Council, 2011), and all animal protocols must be approved by the IACUC before animals can be ordered.
The hospital is registered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (Certificate No. 14-R-0014) and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (License No. 11-0022) as a licensed animal research facility.
MGH files an annual Letter of Assurance (File No. A3596-01) with the NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare confirming compliance with PHS regulations pertaining to laboratory animal care and use.
In addition, the hospital has been accredited by the Association for the Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC) since July 30, 1993.
The Center for Comparative Medicine (CCM) is the central laboratory animal care service for MGH investigators and is led by Donna Matthews Jarrell, DVM, DACLAM, who also serves as the MGH Attending Veterinarian.
CCM activities include husbandry, animal procurement, importing and exporting mouse lines from other academic institutions, interinstitutional transportation, preventive and clinical veterinary care, training in animal manipulative techniques, surgery and post-operative support, mouse breeding and colony preservation, and consultation in animal modeling and protocol design.
Over 130 employees, including seven staff veterinarians (five of whom are board-certified in laboratory animal medicine) and a leadership team of 18 mid- and director-level managers, provide these services throughout MGH.
Space available for animal housing and use at MGH currently totals approximately 95,000 square feet.
On any given day, approximately 105,000 mice, rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, sheep, pigs, non-human primates, and amphibians plus more than 35,000 zebrafish are housed and used for research purposes. All housing facilities are under restricted access. All rats and mice are maintained in microisolator cages.
CCM administers an animal health surveillance program that monitors for presence of infectious disease agents in each animal room.
Commercial suppliers providing animals for use at MGH are required to submit results of their monitoring programs on a regular basis. Similar requirements are enforced for animals transferred from other institutions, with coordination and veterinary assessment provided by CCM staff. Veterinary medical care is available on a 24-hour basis year-round.