In order to reduce regulatory burden, and to better serve the research community, the requirement to allocate animal numbers to individual funding sources within an IACUC protocol has been removed effective Friday April 10^th, 2020.  Approved animal numbers will now be allocated at the whole-protocol level.  Animal usage through the School of Medicine Division of Animal Resources and Yerkes Division of Animal Resources will require that you allocate animals to a specific funding source upon purchase, transfer, or weaning. However, animal usage numbers will subtract from the total number of animals approved in the protocol, not a subtotal for each funding source as occurred under the previous practice. Principal Investigators will still have the responsibility to appropriately charge animals to individual funding sources, however they will no longer be required to document that within the context of the IACUC protocol.

HOW THIS CHANGES IACUC PROTOCOL SUBMISSIONS:

The hope is that this will simplify protocol approval and will greatly reduce the time required to add additional funding subsequent to initial approval. In order to take full advantage of this change, PIs should do the following going forward:

• Write protocols describing everything you plan to do over the next three years (note this would not be dependent upon current funding)
• Develop experiments and experimental plans based on the science and not segregated by funding source or individual grant
• Provide justification for the number of animals at the protocol level, and include everything planned as detailed above
• Once new funding is obtained, review the animal numbers and procedures/experiments in the parent protocol.
• Submit an amendment to add the funding source and any animal numbers or procedures/experiments as required.
• Note that if the original approved protocol adequately covers the new funding, no additions to animals or experiments will be needed and the funding source alone can be added NOTE: The IACUC office will still need the new grant application, and will be required to perform a grant-to-protocol congruence analysis (for federal funding)