Disaster Planning and Preparedness

Research devastation is only one disaster away. Disasters can and do happen, yet many researchers overlook the potential risks involved with losing their mice to disease outbreaks, national disasters (fire, flood, earthquake), breeding errors, data entry mistakes, or genetic drift. By creating a disaster aversion and recovery plan that includes cryopreservation, investigators can take proactive steps to avoid catastrophic loss. Through the use of cryopreservation, we can cryopreserve and recover mouse strains rapidly, reliably, and cost-effectively and help you create a disaster aversion and recovery plan.

Protecting Your Research Investment

Disasters can and do happen. Knowing the four steps in catastrophe planning can help investigators take necessary precautions to prepare and evaluate their readiness in the face of a disaster.

Planning

Identify the number of strains housed in your facility
Ensure each strain has properly documented nomenclature
Back up strain information and store off-site

Cryopreservation

Cryopreservation which is reliable, proven, scalable with quality assurance testing
Sample storage of information in two or more places
Secure storage in continuously monitored cryopreservation tanks

Respond

Immediately following a disaster, relocate surviving mice to a safe facility, where they can be inventoried and assessed.
Ship identified strains that have not been cryopreserved
Create a prioritized list of strains to recover from cryopreserved stock

Recovery

A good recovery plan meets the following requirements:

Ensures that samples stored off-site can be recovered to a specified and opportunistic pathogen free (SOPF) status.
Ensures that mice can be bred for you while your facilities are being restored.
Ensures that mice will be recovered using well-defined, genetically stable inbred mouse strains as oocyte donors.

Please contact our project management team at mbp@ucdavis.edu to develop your disaster preparedness plan using cryopreservation.