Project Summary/Abstract A Comprehensive Laboratory Animal Monitoring System-Home Cage (CLAMS-HC) provides data on metabolic changes in research animal models that are key components for investigations of diabetes, control of appetite, obesity, effects of specific diets, cancer treatment, lung damage, traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and alcoholism. These topics are key to ongoing VA-funded research projects with animal subjects at the VA Puget Sound, and of importance to conditions that harm Veteran health and well-being, and for which better treatments are sought. Eleven funded VA Puget Sound investigators have approved animal research protocols that rely on data provided by a CLAMS-HC. Our station's animal researchers actively make use of a 12-year old CLAMS maintained as a core resource. This ShEEP request is for a new CLAMS-HC with significantly improved capabilities to provide additional types of data from animal models that will strengthen the research. The 2020 model CLAMS-HC features new key elements not available in the model we currently own: standard size rodent housing with bedding substrate contact, measurement of animal weights, respiratory rate, activity tracking, sleep pattern recording, exercise logging (running wheel time and distance), liquid intake volume and preference tracking and food preference/choice tracking. These capabilities are key to the CLAMS-HC utility in working with models of PTSD (to assess alcohol consumption and preference, changes in sleep patterns and activity levels); for models of cancer cachexia and sarcopenia (weight changes tied to food consumption and activity levels); for models of traumatic brain injury (sleep patterns, activity levels, respiratory rate, alcohol consumption and preference); for models of obesity and metabolism (weight changes, exercise and food consumption, activity levels) and for models of lung damage (respiratory rate, activity levels and exercise). The sub-standard-size cages that fit our current CLAMS are too small to accommodate large rodents needed in studies of diet-induced obesity. The new CLAMS-HC obtains data from animals housed in the same size cages in which they are normally maintained, decreasing their stress and allowing for normal movement. Sixteen animals can be studied at one time. The old CLAMS is located in a research animal building slated for destruction in 2021; the old unit will need to be dismantled and reconstructed in another building, then undergo recalibration before returning to service, which will disrupt ongoing studies. A new CLAMS-HC could be installed in another animal research building, undergo calibration and be in use before the old unit is taken down, preventing disruption to ongoing work.