Multiparameter Telemetry as a Sensitive Screening Method to Detect Vaccine Reactogenicity in Mice

Refined vaccines and adjuvants are urgently needed to advance immunization against global infectious challenges such as HIV, hepatitis C, tuberculosis and malaria. Large-scale screening efforts are ongoing to identify adjuvants with improved efficacy profiles. Reactogenicity often represents a major hurdle to the clinical use of new substances. Yet, irrespective of its importance, this parameter has remained difficult to screen for, owing to a lack of sensitive small animal models with a capacity for high throughput testing. Here we report that continuous telemetric measurements of heart rate, heart rate variability, body core temperature and locomotor activity in laboratory mice readily unmasked systemic side-effects of vaccination, which went undetected by conventional observational assessment and clinical scoring. Even minor aberrations in homeostasis were readily detected, ranging from sympathetic activation over transient pyrogenic effects to reduced physical activity and apathy. Results in real-time combined with the potential of scalability and partial automation in the industrial context suggest multiparameter telemetry in laboratory mice as a first-line screen for vaccine reactogenicity. This may accelerate vaccine discovery in general and may further the success of vaccines in combating infectious disease and cancer

Scientific writing in the laboratory animal sciences.

Good communication is important for the dissemination of research results. Here, we summarize the advice that was given to authors at the LA seminar on scientific writing at the FELASA Congress 2016 in Brussels, Belgium on 13-16 June 2016, with the aim of improving the quality of submitted papers and of avoiding common mistakes in scientific reports. See www.felasa2016.eu