Dr. Bradley Ahrens

Dr. Bradley Ahrens discovered the benefits of Optimice’s lack of vibration and Lean design while working with invertebrates as a replacement model for mammals.

In October 2018, we sat down with Dr. Bradley Ahrens at the 69th AALAS National Meeting to chat about his experience with Animal Care Systems. Dr. Ahrens works with and houses invertebrates in the Optimice IVC rack system. Dr. Ahrens uses the Optimice laboratory mouse cage as an “OptiBug” cage for invertebrates. Thinking outside the box!

“We were unsure how a ventilated rack would work, and we had the water hooked up to it and sure enough, the animals would go and some of them learned how to use the lixit – invertebrates –  which is pretty amazing in itself. They learned to use the lixit and they would even use the food hopper as enrichment to climb on. And it ended up being a really great cage for the species that we had, and they all did really well.”