BASi Culex® Features

The Need for Innovation in Sampling

The high cost of pharmaceutical development today, driven by constantly evolving pathologies and healthcare needs, pushes drug developers to pursue operational improvement while striving concurrently to raise quality and adhere to regulatory standards. These are complex challenges when the stakes include an estimated $1B+ needed to bring each new drug to market. With a high proportion of this cost attributed to clinical trials, available efficiencies may be overlooked in the pre-clinical stage, where outcomes can have a substantial effect on the design and efficacy of human trials. Ample opportunities to decrease capital outlay, increase study quality, and satisfy the 3R principle (Reduce, Refine, Replace), exist at the pre-clinical stage.

Integral to successful drug development, most pharmacokinetic (PK) and toxicokinetic (TK) studies are still carried out with the traditional manual sampling method, which involves periodically restraining an animal to dose and then draw blood at planned time points. With the stress involved, extensive human interaction, and manual processing, the manual method has not evolved to today’s stated challenges. The result is a pre-clinical trial that is more expensive, yields less reliable samples, and uses more animals than automated in vivo sampling. The automated sampling method offers the development community resource reduction and process refinement.

Overview

• Sample from rats, mice other small rodents, and now large animals anytime day or night
• User defined method allows for undiluted samples
• Continuous lines from the animal means that almost any connection device can be used including temperature probes, ECG leads and implantable blood pressure transducers.
• Samples are collected into chilled (4°C), sealed vials
• Little or no handling means less stress for animals and technicians

Software

• CulexNotify® Wireless notifications (SMS and email)
• Programmable blood volumes from 5uL to 1.5mL
• Automatically generated reports for dosing and sampling equipment
• Pause and Stat features make software user-friendly
• Control individual sampling methods for up to 4 animals from one computer

Set-Up

• Sampling line is sterile and disposable
• Rinse® program allows tubing sets to be reused
• Waste materials can be completely contained with our Waste Containment Kits
• Setup for each experiment is completed within 10 minutes, and cleanup is even faster

Animal Health

• Animals are conscious and freely moving
• Software displays total blood volume to be sampled and helps you stay IACUC compliant
• “Tend” function maintains catheter patency with microflush of sterile saline
• Blood samples are replaced with an equivalent volume of saline.