Washington University is now developing a new state-of-the-art gnotobiotic facility with NIH support. This ~10,000 square foot facility is anticipated to be one of the largest gnotobiotic facilities of its kind once construction is completed between 2023 and 2024.
Our current interim gnotobiotic facility is 1650 square feet with a total capacity of 528 cages. Breeding colonies maintained in-house include wild-type C57BL/6J, C57BL/6N, and Swiss-Webster strains.
The current facility capacity is 16 large (60” x 24” x 24”) flexible film isolators, each with a maximum cage capacity of 18 cages, and 24 small (30” x 24” x 24”) flexible film isolators, each with a maximum cage capacity of 6 cages. Total isolator cage capacity at present is 432 cages.
(image courtesy of Class Biologically Clean)
(images courtesy of Class Biologically Clean)
Two positive pressure individually-ventilated cage (IVC) racks (Allentown) with hermetically sealed cages and capacity each for 48 housing cages are available for germ–free or gnotobiotic mouse studies. The majority of experiments are conducted in the IVC racks.
(image courtesy of Allentown)
(image courtesy of Allentown)