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Education and Outreach / development of CUSP

 

History and Development of CUSP

The purpose of the CUSP (Compliance Unit Standard Procedures) project is to create an online repository where participating institutions can share standard procedures used in animal care protocols with the broader animal welfare compliance community.

 

CUSP was borne out of a need to reduce administrative burden.  Animal research regulations involving the preparation, revision, and review of animal protocols have been cited in annual surveys as a major source of workload burden for researchers and administrators at institutions across the country. At each institution, researchers were formulating their own procedures for animal use protocols and administrators were reviewing these individual procedures.  Since there are many commonly used procedures in research labs across the country, it is convenient and beneficial to offer standard procedures to be used as a template for researchers to modify as needed and use following IACUC approval at their own institution.  The CUSP online database is a sharing site among investigators for such procedures.  Initially, access is limited to FDP members but the goal is to expand the use of the database to all research institutions.

 

The idea for CUSP was initiated at the University of Washington (UW), where a standard procedure library had already been incorporated into use and was highly successful.  Aubrey Schoenleben and Sally Thompson-Iritani from UW spearheaded a plan for the development of the CUSP database and it was proposed and accepted by FDP in 2017 as a Demonstration project.  It later received the support of federal partners NIH/OLAW.  As of 2021, Jackson Labs is interested in joining the partnership.