Vivarium

Overview of Services

The Vivarium is a Champalimaud Foundation core that houses and breeds animals for research. It comprises two facilities: the Rodent Facility and the Fish Facility, offering various services.

The Rodent Facility is available to investigators for surgery, post-operative care, behavior studies and euthanasia. It also provides housing and care for animals in studies and infectious agents up to ABSL II level, chemical carcinogens and other hazardous substances. Specialized resources include a Transgenic and Rederivation platform and veterinary services.

The Fish Facility houses, breeds and raises zebrafish, which is an emergent model for research and human diseases. The facility provides state-of-the-art husbandry and support services such as fish crosses, embryo care, and line maintenance. It also offers advanced tools such as transgenic generation and genetic screens.

All the facilities and programs for animal care at the Champalimaud Foundation comply with FELASA guidelines according to the European Directive. The entire facility is accredited by the Portuguese authority Direcção Geral de Alimentação e Veterinária (DGAV).

Services

The Vivarium is responsible for routine animal care services.

In the Rodent Facility these services include animal procurement, housing, provision of diets and water, daily observation of animals, reporting of abnormal conditions to the veterinary staff, carcass disposal, sanitization of rooms, cages, racks, and other equipment. The facility also offers special services upon request. These include:

• Feeding non standard diets
• Restraining animals
• Euthanasia of rodents
• Specialized observations
• Animals production
• Transgenics production
• Colony expansion
• Embryo Cryopreservation
• Embryo recovery
• Storage cryopreserved lines
• Rederivation
• Special enrichment
• Necropsy
• Pharmacy
• Animal Imports/Exports

The Fish Facility offers zebrafish procurement, housing, breeding, nursery, food production (rotifers and artemia), daily feeding, daily observation of fish, maintenance of life support systems, reporting of abnormal conditions to the veterinary staff, assessment of water quality, animal record database update, sanitization of rooms, tanks, racks, maintenance of imaging and other equipment. The facility also offers advanced services upon request. These include:

• Fish housing
• Fish crosses
• Embryo bleaching
• Embryo cleaning
• Fish euthanasia
• Microinjection
• Fish production
• Transgenic generation
• Genetic screens
• Line maintenance
• Phenotyping/Genotyping
• Fish imports/exports

Location 

Contacts

Available Equipment and Resources