AREAS IN THE COMPARATIVE MEDICINE CORE FACILITY 

The following services are currently available in the Comparative Medicine Unit:

Rodent Area 

• Colony management: crossbreeding, weaning, marking, tail cutting, etc.
• Carrying out experimental procedures such as bleeding, inoculation, organ harvesting, etc.
• Histopathology tissue sections.
• User consulting and technical support.

Aquarium

• Breeding of zebrafish to be used in scientific research (feeding, reproduction, etc.
• Genotyping of different lines.
• Import and export of zebrafish from and to other research centres.

Pathology Service

• Macroscopic examination of different organs and tissue
• Sample collectio
• Fixation or freezing.

• Complete histological processing: Tissue dehydration and bleaching, sectioning, paraffin infiltration, microtome or cryostat cutting, mounting on slides, H&E staining.
• Special stains: The following techniques are currently being refined: Masson’s trichrome, Mallory’s trichrome, Von Kossa, Weichert’s Hematoxylin, lacZ for B galactosidase. Other techniques can be developed according to internal needs.
• Immunohistochemistry/Immunofluorescence. Currently, there are several protocols for immunohistochemistry or immunofluorescence, both direct and indirect, that are developed and made available for CNIC users. For example: GFP, CD31, CD45, CD68, Cyclin D1, PhosphoHistone3. Development is open to any other protocol that the user may need.
• In situ hybridization, which allows for specific DNA or RNA sequences in a tissue section to be localized through the use of a complement-marked DNA or RNA sequence.
• Optical projection tomography: Allows for 3D visualization of tissues and can be especially useful in those that have been marked using fluorescence, immunohistochemistry or lacZ stain.

• Morphological identification and functional interpretation of different pathological changes that originate in the animal either through natural causes, an infectious agent or a natural or experimentally introduced infectious agent.

Experimental Surgery Department 

• To provide professional and technical service/consulting to the Departments on the use and implementation of experimental surgical models.
• To provide surgical models for in vivo and in vitro experiments.
• Fine-tuning and development of innovative technologies of general interest for the CNIC scientific project.
• Implementation of basic surgical techniques and the search for continuous improvement in techniques, protocols and instrumentation.
• Development of proprietary lines and projects in technological and scientific research.
• Collaboration with CNIC research groups on the design and development of projects that include the development of surgical animal models.

• Vasectomy
• Myocardial infarction by permanent ligation of the left anterior descending coronary artery
• Cryo-infarction: Myocardial infarction induced with liquid N₂
• Cardiac ischemia-reperfusion: Myocardial infarction by temporary ligation of the left anterior descending coronary artery
• Cerebral ischemia-reperfusion: by temporary ligation of middle cerebral artery
• Ischemic limb: ligation of the left femoral artery
• Telemetry: surgical implantation of a transmitter to monitor Electrocardiogram or Blood Pressure
• Aortic banding: cardiac hypertrophy model using stenosis of the transverse aorta