# Animal and Behavior Core

> **NIH NIH P01** · UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE · 2020 · $394,717

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Perinatal brain injury induced by hypoxia ischemia remains a leading cause of intellectual and physical
disability throughout the world. The use of rodent models will contribute to both prevention and treatment of
life-long impairment in infants. The Animal and Behavior Core (Core B) will provide rats subjected to hypoxia
ischemia (H/I) with and without prior inflammation for four integrated Projects. To maintain consistency across
experiments, Core B will also treat pups with the proposed neuroprotective treatments, including hypothermia.
To facilitate data interpretation, the Animals and Behavior Core will also provide standard ratings of crude
histopathology to facilitate determination of efficacy of neuroprotective interventions. The variability of injury is
well recognized, and such rankings are often used to determine neuroprotection effects in mildly injured rats
separately from severely injured rats. This will particularly inform experiments that require tissue to be
homogenized, such as western blotting, lipid raft isolation and NMR, and therefore do not include histological
information. These a priori rankings will be used to track both the consistency of the injury over time, and also
give us a broader picture of potential efficacy of neuroprotective compounds. Core B will organize and maintain
banked samples from Projects I-IV, and make them available to the laboratories of Projects I-IV. Such Core
activities are designed to circumvent the need to produce new animals for pilot experiments that may arise as
data collection progresses. The Animals and Behavior Core will execute novel combinations of behavioral
assays to determine the extent of dysregulation within the cerebellum and reciprocal connections between the
cerebellum and other brain regions. Finally, data collection and communication concerning progress of
experiments will be facilitated by implementation of an IntraNet accessible relational database. This database
will be maintained by Core B personnel. This Core will also collect tissue at the appropriate time post H/I for
specific experiments and track use of tissue samples in the intrarelational database. The overall goal of the
Animal and Behavior Core is to assure quality control and cross-project integration to maximize the potential
for detecting molecular and behavioral impairments caused by H/I and/or perinatal systemic inflammation, and
the effects of therapeutic interventions. A critical strength of this Program Project Grant is the use of the same
procedures to generate hypoxia ischemia and treatments. This will enable Projects I-IV to make conclusions
quickly and revise experimental approaches if necessary based on data collected from other Projects.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9979917
- **Project number:** 5P01HD085928-05
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE
- **Principal Investigator:** MARY C MCKENNA
- **Activity code:** P01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $394,717
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2016-08-17 → 2023-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9979917

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9979917, Animal and Behavior Core (5P01HD085928-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9979917. Licensed CC0.

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