Laboratory Animal Resource Center (LARC)

Mission Statement:

  LARC's mission is to:

• Provide quality care for all animals used at the University of California, San Francisco.
• Assist the faculty in their mission of quality research with respect to the use of laboratory animals.
• Act as a resource center for the faculty on all issues relating to laboratory animals.
• Assist the University to meet its goal of humane treatment of laboratory animals.

The Laboratory Animal Resource Center (LARC) of the University of California, San Francisco is administratively part of the Office of Research Services in the Research unit of the University

Now Featuring:

LARC Rodent Breeding Core:

LARC now offers a mouse breeding services program.  Investigators can place orders for mice they will need for their study.  LARC will breed the mice and deliver them when they are needed as requested by the investigator.

Current Inventory project numbers:

• Currently completing projects for 13 different laboratories
• Maintain 38 different lines including: F1 hybrids, Single and Multiple Transgenices, Knockouts, Flox/cre models, NOD and SCID
• Have established an in-house rederivation service

Click on here to be directed to the Breeding Core home page

New Laboratory Notifications

LARC has started lab notifications of rodent sentinel screening results to inform laboratories of current room pathogen-free status.

A new reusable cage card system has been implemented in multiple rodent facilities including re-usable card tagging and electronic notice of health checks, weanings needed, overcrowding and new litters.

Improved Transfer Efficiency:

All within the same facility barrier to barrier transfer time has become more efficient ensuring transfer time to be within 2 days from the time transfer request is electronically placed.  This compares to the previous average of 4 day transfer time.

LARC has designated husbandry staff members to ensure all transfer samples are being collected and read within 2 days of transfer placement (unless transfer has a large number of cages).

Daily full-time drivers have been added allowing facility to facility transfers to occur on a daily basis as compared to the tri-weekly schedule that was previously in place.

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Recent Departmental Publications:

LARC Per Diem Rate Changes:

LARC has a goal to provide excellent laboratory animal care while keeping our per diem prices as low as possible for the research laboratories of whom we provide care for. Figure 1 (see below) plots the LARC per diem rates from 1999-current in comparison to the national inflation rate changes using the consumer price index.  Many of LARC's price changes have occurred due to the change in inflation over those years.

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