The UWM Committee Overseeing Animal Research Reviews Ongoing Research

In a nondescript room in UWM’s Lubar building the morning of Friday, April 5th, six members of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee met to oversee the proceedings of five of UWM’s animal research programs.

Chaired by Rodney Swain, Ph.D., a professor at UWM, the meeting convened to review ongoing protocols – experiments and research done by students and staff at several UWM facilities, namely the School of Freshwater Sciences and research done on campus at UWM. The committee exists to ensure that standards for animal care are being met and at this meeting they revisited five ongoing protocols to ensure compliance with the standards set by federal law and the university.

Swain was joined at the meeting by the following people: Berri Forman, UWM Veterinarian, Jenny Nemke, Animal Resource Center Manager, Leanne Olson, Wisconsin Lutheran College head of Psychology and Human Social Services, Mike Pauers, assistant professor at UW-Waukesha, and John Wheeldon, retired MSOE Associate Professor. The diversity of knowledge represented here is something that the full committee of approximately 20 people who contribute to overseeing research within the UW-System was looking for when this group of six was formed.

Swain said, “These people are not only here because they’re qualified, but also because they care.” Of the five protocols brought to the table, three involved fish and other water-dwelling vertebrates and two concerned research involving mice. Each of these research efforts had been running for months prior to this meeting and were being brought before the IACUC due to the mandatory review deadline built into every ongoing research protocol under the IACUC’s supervision.

At 8:15 a.m., the first protocol review began. On the agenda was the care and health of mice being kept and used for neurological research. All of the committee members seemed familiar with the graduate students presenting the protocol and quickly settled into a comfortable back and forth about the research.

Committee members asked questions about any discrepancies or confusion they had about the protocol log which had been distributed to the committee members days prior for review. To these questions, the presenting researchers either clarified or made notes about small errors in terminology or understanding.

One such comment about terminology was the use of the phrase “burrito-ing them in a little blanket” in reference to introducing mice to human contact. The committee decided swaddling would be a more appropriate term. As the meeting progressed, it became clear that there were no major concerns about the quality of research and once all the required forms were filled the committee put the continuation of the protocol to a vote, with which it unanimously passed.

As the committee continued through four more meetings, another involving neurological research with mice and the last three presenting research using fish and aquatic life, it became clear that the format and theme of the first meeting were not an anomaly. All five reviews and their researchers spoke with familiarity and there wasn’t a single question that didn’t end up being resolved as a minor error in wording or a misplaced checkbox. Each protocol was voted on at the end of its review, like the first, and each one was unanimously approved as both worthy of continuation and up to par with guidelines.

The IACUC overseeing the UW-System is beholden to standards not only set by the federal law through the USDA and Lab of Animal Welfare but also by voluntary inclusion in the American Association for Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care or AAALAC.

Wheeldon reiterated Swain’s comment animal care with, “We’re here because we care that this research is done the best way possible.” According to the AALAC program description on their website (https://www.aaalac.org/about/index.cfm) participation with their standards demonstrates “their commitment to responsible animal care and use.”

An integral part of the UW System’s animal research standards is the phrase: the three R’s. “Replacement, reduction, and refinement before we begin testing on animals,” Wheeldon expanded. Replacement asks if the proposed animal research can be done with simulations of some kind. Reduction refers to finding smaller, simpler, and less impacted animals to perform research with.

Refinement is the process of ensuring the highest standards of care, efficiency, and least invasive forms of testing are done. Not only are these standards, set by AALAC, observed prior to the start of a new protocol, but at every review of ongoing protocols the same questions are asked to ensure that methods have not changed since the last application of the three R’s.

Both of the studies using rodents reviewed by the committee were related to neuroscience research, one of UWM’s larger areas of influential research.

“Some of our neurological research wouldn’t be possible without using mice because of the similarities in connections in their brain to ours,” Wheeldon said, one of the justifications why the animals used weren’t reduced to any other animals. In the reviews of these protocols, Forman, the UWM Veterinarian, often took the lead on asking questions. She queried the researchers on specific handling methods and especially ways they gauged the animals for measures of stress.

The fish and aquaculture, or studies of an aquatic environment which in this case is Lake Michigan, protocols were more varied in scope than the first two protocols. The first fish protocol to be reviewed investigated the process in which certain fish regenerate nerve cells. The next protocol had a wider focus, essentially a repeat of a decade old study of PCB, human-introduced pollution, levels in the waters of Lake Michigan and how the changing diversity of lake life affects those levels. Whereas the first study focused on a certain type of fish the second study used several species in its findings and the questions became moderately more complex as differences between treatments were questioned.

Pauers, the professor from UW-Waukesha, was familiarly referred to as the “fish guy” during the meeting and at times acted as an inbetween for the presenting researcher and the committee to explain specialized terms. The final protocol of the meeting to be reviewed was a study into a new formulation of fish food in order to improve health and growth of fish both in research studies but also for farming and commercial use. Just like the four prior studies, the only points of contention were changes to terms and clarification for the committee’s understanding and as each prior, the conclusion was a vote to continue the study unanimously.

“You’ve got very pure questions, but then along the way you develop real-world applications for the research,” Pauers said. Sometimes these applications are more concrete, like a better fish food but then more broad and applied results come from animal research as well.

Wheeldon’s adult son was diagnosed with myeloma cancer, and he shared how unlikely it is his son would still be alive today if animal research hadn’t led to a greater understanding of the disease. While the research that is helping his son didn’t come from UWM there is a wide variety of research that does. Swain listed off the top of his head that developments in Multiple Sclerosis, cancer, Lyme’s disease, and arthritis have all been made by the nationally recognized research program at UWM.

UWM has long been a top-tier research facility. When the University of Wisconsin system was founded in 1972, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Wisconsin-Madison were both designated doctoral facilities sharing a doctoral and research mission. Over the next couple of decades, due to funding and infrastructure challenges especially compared to Madison, UWM’s status as a research facility fell behind. However, due to a plethora of awards and grants gained through UWM staff and student research initiatives, enough funding was achieved to gain recognition as one of the United State’s top 200 research Universities according to the Carnegie Classification.

Since then the status given to UWM has bolstered its mission of research and access. Between the high profile research in public health being done at the Zilber facility and the construction of the School of Freshwater Sciences, a one-of-a-kind facility. As well as greatly increased graduate and undergraduate research, UWM was rocketed into top tier research status – among the top 115 facilities in the United States. Rodents are generally the animal subjects in research protocols. Swain and Wheeldon both commented on how no dogs or cats are used in UW-System research.

The work of IACUC in the UW-System to uphold these standards is especially important due to the scale of the system’s research program. With UWM’s national recognition and work being done to improve science and medicine in many ways the committee takes as many steps as possible to prevent setbacks or improperly conducted protocols. Swain says the committee has rarely had to stop an ongoing protocol for failure to adhere to guidelines. More often, but still rare he says “a protocol would be stopped before it started if we determined it didn’t follow standards.” The IACUC hopes this measure of attention and rigor to strict animal care standards will keep UWM in its place as a top ranked research facility.

Correction: This article was corrected to remove a false contention that animal research is conducted in Enderis Hall. Animal research is not conducted in Enderis Hall.